Exe File Has Totally & Utterly Disappeared
Sagana:
Ancient, although I'm bearing bad news, that sounds very much like the virus/malware/whateveritis that ate my computer. It had the same clickys for "get this to get rid of spyware" (which btw, you shouldn't click, not even "no" but only close the window or kills the process. If you touch the button, you're further infecting.) I tried tons and tons of virus programs and automatic fixes and it was embedded too deeply - they could kill parts of it, but not enough to keep it from regenning itself. I ended up reformatting and reinstalling (which meant I lost my game and downloads entire, as all backups were on the same computer - my other one having died of motherboard failure shortly before.) I suspect you'll be best off to do the same - and could it be the virus has eaten something your CD drive needs too?
Anyway, the daemon stuff being handy, a playable drive is a kinda important thing and if you can, I'd get that fixed and reinstall the operating system.
Most software - almost all types, commercial, residential, little junk and big important things, phone home anymore. Anytime windows asks you if you want to send a bug report because it crashed, it's phoning home - and when it does that, it can send along whatever information it cares to from your computer. Photoshop, Illustrator, Word - all of them dl updates and send 'bug reports' even without your express permission unless you stop 'em. The Sims does too - the net connect is up, there's a button for going straight to the BBS, it auto-starts registrations and sends bug reports. I'm with JM in that I don't *like* my programs talking on the net unless I specifically tell them to (used to be, with a modem, it was easy to cut them off - harder anymore). But it's harder to stop them anymore, it's taken for granted that they do, and I doubt seriously it's illegal.
Ancient Sim:
Well, after several attempts with several different virus/spam removers, I finally got rid of two Trojans, a worm and a huge chunk of spyware & malware. Finally, the messages have stopped. I even got myself a year's free use of a rather cool virus/trojan/worm/malware monitor/remover thingy that you normally only get a month for, all because it told me I had already used-up the free trial when I'd never even heard of it until a few minutes previously. It was actually my trustyold AVG freebie that got rid of the trojans & worm, they'd already gone when I finally got this other thing working.
Anyway, the good news is that I haven't had to reinstall Windows, which only takes about 5 mins on this pc as it's all stored on the secondary partition and I only need to press a button, but it'd mean having to download the entire game & all the expansions, which would be a pain. The other good news is that I managed to find a copy of the UK OFB on bt and it's working perfectly. Said at first it would take nearly a week to download, but luckily it took a lot less. There were about 20 copies in the download for some reason, but the first one worked fine.
It wasn't just OFB in the end. Quite a few other files with "Application" as the file type have got these DOS-type icons. Whatever did it was quite powerful, because it kept stopping Grisoft from working, it would only work if it went straight into it after downloading, it wouldn't re-start once I'd closed it, nor could I use a couple of online virus-checkers I tried. Couldn't get into Safe Mode either, so I couldn't remove anything that way. I'll have to wait and see whether I can recover from it, if not I will have to reinstall because I have no System Restore points. They weren't working anyway, but I had to close it down so I could run the virus-checkers properly, they kept finding viruses in there all the time.
Oh, and I only got the viruses this morning, so they're nothing to do with the cd-drive not working. I got them from opeining something I downloaded from bt - the file was absolutely chock-a-block with the things. That'll teach me to not want to pay £1
Ancient Sim:
Well, after several attempts with several different virus/spam removers, I finally got rid of two Trojans, a worm and a huge chunk of spyware & malware. Finally, the messages have stopped. I even got myself a year's free use of a rather cool virus/trojan/worm/malware monitor/remover thingy that you normally only get a month for, all because it told me I had already used-up the free trial when I'd never even heard of it until a few minutes previously. It was actually my trustyold AVG freebie that got rid of the trojans & worm, they'd already gone when I finally got this other thing working.
Anyway, the good news is that I haven't had to reinstall Windows, which only takes about 5 mins on this pc as it's all stored on the secondary partition and I only need to press a button, but it'd mean having to download the entire game & all the expansions, which would be a pain. The other good news is that I managed to find a copy of the UK OFB on bt and it's working perfectly. Said at first it would take nearly a week to download, but luckily it took a lot less. There were about 20 copies in the download for some reason, but the first one worked fine. Also half-a-dozen or more reg. keys, but I used my own and it worked perfectly.
It wasn't just OFB in the end. Quite a few other files with "Application" as the file type have got these DOS-type icons. Whatever did it was quite powerful, because it kept stopping Grisoft from working, it would only work if it went straight into it after downloading, it wouldn't re-start once I'd closed it, nor could I use a couple of online virus-checkers I tried. Couldn't get into Safe Mode either, so I couldn't remove anything that way. I'll have to wait and see whether I can recover from it, if not I will have to reinstall because I have no System Restore points. They weren't working anyway, but I had to close it down so I could run the virus-checkers properly, they kept finding viruses in there all the time.
Oh, and I only got the viruses this morning, so they're nothing to do with the cd-drive not working. I got them from opeining something I downloaded from bt - the file was absolutely chock-a-block with the things. Most stuff on there is OK I think, but obviously the odd fake is going to slip through and ya takes ya chances, I guess.
But, all's well that ends well, or sort of. Still have the cd-drive problem, but at least I know I can get hold of the almost-here-but-presumably-still-non-existent furry expansion. Probably just as well, that way I can test it out first because I'm very unsure about it. I don't even play OFB anymore, it was just too boring and there were too many things about it that drove me crazy, like guests running off whenever there was a home business on the lot and that sort of thing. All I really like about it is the lifts.
Sagana:
Even though it looked clean, mine auto-started when I restarted the computer, or switched users. It was stuck somewhere in the startup files. Just a note to try that and scan again before you decide it's completely gone.
That said, <megacheers> on getting rid of the damn thing! And welcome back to sims life and times :)
DrBeast:
HijackThis is a very useful tool for getting rid of remnants of baddies stuck in the startup menu and/or the registry.
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