[WIP] GZDA - Virus Issues (p. 16)

[wildweasel]

Don't give up hope yet. Try getting a Linux Live CD and a USB flash drive, boot off the live CD and see if you can copy the WAD file and resources to said flash drive. I recommend Ubuntu.

[eliw00d]

Don't give up hope yet. Try getting a Linux Live CD and a USB flash drive, boot off the live CD and see if you can copy the WAD file and resources to said flash drive. I recommend Ubuntu.

I just tried this, and when it came to the "Boot from CD", I hit a key. I never saw anything related to Linux after that, only the mode selection with "Safe Mode", "Last Known Good" and "Start Windows Normally". Any of those options, by the way, just blue screens and immediately restarts my computer. I have tried making it a slave to a drive I went out and bought yesterday, and it makes my computer run extremely slowly and it tries to do CHKDSK and when it finally gets into Windows (on the master drive), I can't access the (slave) drive. All I remember is going to sleep, waking up and my computer had restarted or something in the night and was sitting at a "DISK BOOT FAILURE" screen after BIOS. I dunno what kind of virus did that, but man did it clean up shop. :/

[DoomRater]

That.... doesn't sound like a virus...

[eliw00d]

That.... doesn't sound like a virus...

My brother and I got the same viruses; his affected him immediately, and got so severe that we had to do a repair installation to even get into safe mode. He was able to back up most of his data before formatting. For me, I seemingly got rid of the viruses over a week ago with AVG, and didn't have any problems until just the other day. My hard drive is barely two years old, I don't see how it would be a failure so suddenly. My brother had the same issues with booting up and getting blue screens, except he was able to do a repair installation and I am not. /sigh

[David Ferstat]

This is yet another example of why you should:

1) run up-to-date anti-virus software,

2) run a firewall (not the POS one-way Microsoft includes with XP),

3) never, ever run your computer under an administrator-level user-account unless you're maintaining it, and

4) place your data on a different partition (and preferably a different physical drive) from your OS.


Which of these simpe rules have you broken today?

[NeuralStunner]

You should also look into Macrium Reflect. It will save a complete compressed copy of an entire drive as a backup - including the boot sector and MBR (master boot record). I use it every week on my main drive. It has saved my system's arse on a couple occasions.

[eliw00d]

This is yet another example of why you should:

1) run up-to-date anti-virus software,
2) run a firewall (not the POS one-way Microsoft includes with XP),
3) never, ever run your computer under an administrator-level user-account unless you're maintaining it, and
4) place your data on a different partition (and preferably a different physical drive) from your OS.


Which of these simpe rules have you broken today?

1. Check, but it was AVG Free and didn't seem to completely get rid of the virus
2. Check
3. Umm, okay
4. Check for the most part, but I had gotten lazy over the past 6 months and left things on my C: drive (like my mod and some pictures)

Regardless, the virus came from a game I downloaded, so it had more to do with that than anything else. Definitely turned me off from piracy. And no, it was not from P2P, but from usenet.

You should also look into Macrium Reflect. It will save a complete compressed copy of an entire drive as a backup - including the boot sector and MBR (master boot record). I use it every week on my main drive. It has saved my system's arse on a couple occasions.

I will have to give that a shot, thanks!

[David Ferstat]

... Regardless, the virus came from a game I downloaded, so it had more to do with that than anything else. Definitely turned me off from piracy. And no, it was not from P2P, but from usenet...

Let's take a wild guess here: you didn't scan your dowloaded file with AVG, did you?

There's another lesson to be learned here. Usenet may not equal P2P, but what you can download from it is no more reliable.

Oh, and another one. Executable files, especially from unknown sources, are dangerous. They're even more dangerous when they get run under an Administrator-level account, because they then have access to everything on your PC, and can do things like disable or suborn your security software, install e-mail clients for spam and trojans to recruit your PC into a botnet, and generally give you really crappy time. Oh, and delete your data and kill your OS.

[eliw00d]

... Regardless, the virus came from a game I downloaded, so it had more to do with that than anything else. Definitely turned me off from piracy. And no, it was not from P2P, but from usenet...

Let's take a wild guess here: you didn't scan your dowloaded file with AVG, did you?

There's another lesson to be learned here. Usenet may not equal P2P, but what you can download from it is no more reliable.

Oh, and another one. Executable files, especially from unknown sources, are dangerous. They're even more dangerous when they get run under an Administrator-level account, because they then have access to everything on your PC, and can do things like disable or suborn your security software, install e-mail clients for spam and trojans to recruit your PC into a botnet, and generally give you really crappy time. Oh, and delete your data and kill your OS.

Less criticizing what happened and more about my mod, please. If there are any pressing issues/bugs with my mod, please let me know and I will fix them, otherwise this mod is done. Thanks. If you have any helpful information about recovering my hard drive, please PM me, otherwise stay on topic please.

Also, I don't appreciate the insults to my intelligence; I have been using usenet for over a decade and I knew full well the risks. I did scan the file with AVG, which turned up nothing. It wasn't until I installed the game that this happened.

[NeuralStunner]

I'd advise anyone to get a copy of Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware and keep it up-to-date - Once installed, it will add a scan option to the context menu of any file. I'd also suggest avast! antivirus. Norman Malware Cleaner is also a good system scanner, it may be able to repair files. These tools are all free. If you want more stuff for free, (even some games,) check out SourceForge.

I had a thread with all this stuff in Off-Topic, but it got lost/hidden.

How much work did you lose, exactly? It stinks to go back to the last release, hopefully you can get into that HD of yours.

Otherwise... I'm not being snide at all when I offer my condolances.

[eliw00d]

I'd advise anyone to get a copy of Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware and keep it up-to-date - Once installed, it will add a scan option to the context menu of any file. I'd also suggest avast! antivirus. Norman Malware Cleaner is also a good system scanner, it may be able to repair files. These tools are all free. If you want more stuff for free, (even some games,) check out SourceForge.

I had a thread with all this stuff in Off-Topic, but it got lost/hidden.

How much work did you lose, exactly? It stinks to go back to the last release, hopefully you can get into that HD of yours.

Otherwise... I'm not being snide at all when I offer my condolances.

I actually switch to avast! after this incident, AVG let me down. I also use Malwarebytes in combination with Lavasoft Adaware. I've dealt with viruses before, but never one as devastating as this. I lost a lot of personal data, like pictures and stuff that I had left in My Pictures and My Documents, along with all my saved games. Doom-wise, I lost a huge collection of WADs going back a decade, including every version of my mod (released and unreleased), other mini-mods I had made, and a bunch of other Doom-related files. Overall, it wasn't a terrible loss, just frustrating. The good thing to come out of it was buying a Velociraptor 300GB drive and installing x64 Pro on it, which lets me use all 4GB of RAM I have. My computer has never run faster!

Browsing through my D: drives came up with some GZDA stuff, so I'll have to look through it and see which version it is. I don't think it's my working copy, but it should be the latest. It's a start, at least.

[NeuralStunner]

One reason why I used a utility to change "My Documents" onto a different drive/directory. Not that I use it much, anyways. I tend to keep things on various drives in their own folders and subfolders. Tidier that way.

Good to hear things are not so bad!

[eliw00d]

One reason why I used a utility to change "My Documents" onto a different drive/directory. Not that I use it much, anyways. I tend to keep things on various drives in their own folders and subfolders. Tidier that way.

Good to hear things are not so bad!

Well, the biggest losses personally are my pictures and documents. I hosted my mods (for Doom and other games) on my website, so I'm thankful for that. As far as I can tell, I have the latest version of my mod on D:, which is a surprise as I don't remember saving it there. I did lose my working copy, which had a lot of experimental stuff I left out because it wasn't ready. Shouldn't take much to get back on track, though. Either way, though, I'd like to fix any issues/bugs with the mod, since I've neglected it for some time. Any suggestions?

[eliw00d]

Has anyone been using this mod with the SVN versions of GZDoom? My custom HUD no longer works, but I can't find what could have changed for it to break...

Any insight would be appreciated.

[eliw00d]

Nevermind, I downloaded a couple of new mods and looked at how they did it, and believe I have fixed it. I will try to release a working copy of 1.82 in the near future, but due to school and my other mod it won't be a huge update.