Off-Topic Info Request

Last week, my wife received an e-mail spam that I'd seen and deleted more than once before, but this particular e-mail to her freezes the computer when opened (no attachments at all) and cannot be deleted. When right clicked to get a menu delete option or an originating address, the computer still freezes immediately, before the menue can be fully displayed. The displayed part of the sender "address" reads "wrvnotremote@spra..." Three "Ctrl-Alt-Deletes" will shut down the computer, which can then be restarted. Norton virus scan gets up to something over 40%-scanned and then suddenly (suspiciously) declares that no viruses were found. Sometimes I find Norton "Real-Time Scanning" disabled and have to re-enable it, but I haven't correlated this occurrence to any particular thing yet. I have sent her a couple "buffer" e-mails to help avoid any accidental re-opening of this e-mail.

Does anyone recognize these symptoms?

SK

LAST EDITED ON Nov-11-03 AT 03:13 PM (CST)
 
>Does anyone recognize these symptoms?

I don't, sorry. Generally, the best place to start looking is
at the Symantec site (they make Norton), http://securityresponse.symantec.com
Very useful website.

Serge,

Are you using Outlook to retrieve mail? If you are, then configure Outlook so that you do not have the preview pane showing on the bottom right. To do this, (1) select view on the menu bar at the top,(2)select layout from the drop down menu (3)you will see a small window open - at the bottom of this window you will see preview pane. Unselect(?) the show preview pane option.

After that, try to delete the email that's causing the problem. I had this happen when an email during the preview phase was trying to load another site and for some reason got stuck.... a real "pain in the pane"

Let me know if it works.... see you at the field if the snow holds off!

LAST EDITED ON Nov-11-03 AT 04:47 PM (CST)
 
Dick's advice is good, so much of the spam nowadays immediately tries to access the internet.

To prevent this, you need something like Norton Personal Firewall, which tells you when the message is attempting to access the internet and allows you to prevent it.

You might try re-installing your antivirus program, and updating its virus definitions. Then disable the internet and scan for viruses. Unfortunately, some of the virii (?) actually clobber the virus checker (e.g. Klez32) and goof up the registry so bad that you have to rebuild your entire system. This happened to me, and I was unable to get the Live Update feature to work at all, and Norton AV was toasted.

If you try to get rid of such a virus (check some of the sites like Symantech and McCaffee for a stand-along program) be sure you follow all instructions to the letter. Most of the time you have to start up your OS in "safe" mode, otherwise the virus just continues to spread itself.

Good luck. But don't be surprised if you end up rebuilding the system to fix it. One such experience and you'll be ready for the firewall..

[photo not recovered: 3e69bb3870f12ad5.jpg]

"It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all" -James Thurber

Thanks, guys!

Preston-

I just put that URL back into my "Favorites" list this afternoon. There were things listed that might be relevant, but no comments about how they get into a system or any more specific identifying traits. I'll keep watching that. I've also downloaded virus definitions a couple times since this e-mail thing arrived.

Dick-

I followed your directions and WAS able to delete the e-mail just now. Thanks! Now I'll try the virus scan again - already did it an hour ago with same results, stopping on same file ('D:|_Restore') around 40+% - but whatever was there will probably still be there.

Larry-

I just saw your post as I looked back. I may well have to do this - may get some help to do it without screwing up the works myself (!). I AM worried that something's "ticking" in there. I had the Norton firewall, but lost it to an "upgrade" when we changed drives. I also just discovered that the real-time scanning and e-mail scanning were again disabled today. I again "re-enabled" them.

Wow- helpful replies are arriving faster than I can type (not surprising from the standpoint of my virtuoso 2-finger - sometimes 3 - technique!). Thanks Igor.

Serge

Serge,

Glad you could delete the message. I had a similar problem with my Norton Antivirus program where it would lock up during the scan. The problem was with an older version of Antivirus. I installed a new version and updated the virus definitions and it worked. There were no viruses on my machine just a quirky Norton program that was not up to date.

Serge, I got very similar problem, but not related to spam. It was regular mail from a friend. The outlook freezes, I could not copy delete some mails, copy to another outlook file and so, until the file completely crashed. Then I tried to import all mails to another newly created file. Some mails was not reloadable, but it worked for while. Then I got those problems again. When I looked to my backups, I saw it was always when my outlook file was little over 1.85GB. I deleted some large mails with attachments and since that time I keep file size under 1.7GB – no problems since than.

Yet another good reason not to use Outlook or Outlook Express.

I really like Mozilla Thunderbird for both Windows and Linux.