A friend gave me her computer this past week, after being hit with several Trojan Horse and FAKEAVERT viruses while connected on Facebook. This is a "vanilla" computer running XP Pro, built by her son. He had installed Norton Anti-Virus server edition for her.
Last week, the Norton software found the infestation and the warning/action window popped up. Since several of the actions required a re-boot, she did so, but Norton still reported threats and she didn't know what to do, so she brought it to me.
I first booted it up without an internet connection and received no alerts whatsoever. Her latest update was August 14, 2009, so I ran a complete scan, which found nothing. I then connected it to the Internet and performed a live update which loaded definitions through Friday, August 21, 2009. Ran another scan and again, nothing was found. She then asked me to please log into her Facebook account and see if any warnings would surface there, which I did. This time, within a few minutes of being connected to Facebook, the warning window popped up, announcing it had found several Trojan Horse viruses, as well as the FAKEAVERT virus, with first notifications of these viruses date on Friday, August 21st. A couple were automatically deleted and the Trojans were quarantined, with a re-boot required to clean completely. I was asked if I wanted to keep the viruses in Quarantine after the re-boot and I said yes.
I then allowed the re-boot and the computer has been in a re-boot loop since. Even if I attempt to start it in any level of Safe Mode, it always defaults to a re-boot without loading Windows. It never proceeds further than the boot-level instructions on the screen and then proceeds to loop over and over again.
She does not have any emergency boot discs from her son. Additionally, I did search on site for emergency files I could download through my computer and burn to a disc as a boot-level emergency disk, however I was unable to find them anywhere on the Symantec/Norton site.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
sgreene978.