BleepingComputer.com: Error loading siek.guo

Hi all,

I get the following msg when I boot up my pc, I ran Zonealarm antivirus and it found a virus which it said it would remove on the next reboot. I did this and I also removed a program I was using DVD Region+CSS Free. I appologise for not noting the virus down but have never had any issues before when zonealarm has detected something.

Regards

Mike



EDIT: Topic moved from XP forum to a more appropriate place ~ Elise

This post has been edited by elise025: 22 December 2009 - 09:00 AM

It happens sometimes that when a malicious file is installed on your system and set to run on startup, a scan will remove the file but not the startup item and you will see a missing file kind of message every time you reboot or login.

You can find and fix this problem with the Autoruns program.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinte...s/bb963902.aspx

Downlaod and launch Autoruns and wait for it to finish scanning your system.

When Autoruns is finished scanning, it will say Ready at the bottom left corner.

Look through the list of startup items and find the one related to your error message.

Right-click on the offending entry and choose to Delete it.

Reboot your computer and troubleshoot remaining issues.

Here are some other good scanning tools - not every tool knows about everything so you need to use more than one scanning program:

Download, install, update and do a full scan with these free malware detection programs:

Malwarebytes (MBAM): http://malwarebytes.org/
SUPERAntiSpyware: (SAS): http://www.superantispyware.com/

They can be uninstalled later if desired.

Thks my friend, the msg has disappeared. However the desktop icons are taken a while to appear. I have since installed skybot (maybe I’m being a bit cautious). I have ran msconfig and can’t see anything untoward in the start up tab. I would appreciate your thoughts on the matter.

Thks

Mike

Good job.

I plagiarized that from some post by garmanma from some time back and now it is in my notes for copy/paste!

If you mean Spybot, it is a respectable tool. It has lost it's luster with me personally and no longer top drawer, but some people really like it.

The one gripe I have about Spybot is their Teatimer function and the amount of virtual memory it consumes. On systems that do not quite have enough RAM, a lack of VM can lead to the familiar informative message about Windows adjusting your paging file (you know the one...) and sometimes people don't understand the message and interpret the message as an error and it's not an error. It is XP telling you it is doing it's job. It may not be observed on your system but to me, it takes up CPU and memory and I like to run lean and mean.

If Teatimer is installed and enabled you can see what I mean:

Right click the Taskbar, choose to open Task Manager.

Click View, Select Columns, check the box that says:

Virtual Memory Size

Expand the width of the Task Manager box width so you can see all the columns.

Click the VM Size column heading once or twice to sort by VM Size biggest to smallest, top to bottom. Who's on top?

You can read about Teatimer in the Spybot forums:

http://forums.spybot.info/blog.php?b=36

If you let Spybot immunize your system (I have), it will add a bunch of WWW sites that it doesn't care for to your Windows hosts file to block those sites from your browsing - which is fine but some people don't care for the tinkering and there are other methods. The hosts file change is a passive change and nothing runs behind the scenes like Teatimer.

I still let Spybot do my hosts file once in a while - that along with Firefox and the Adblock Plus add-on lead to almost no pop ups or those annoying underline thingys that pop up messages when you hover your mouse over them in your reading, but now I run Chrome 99.9% of the time for it's small footprint and performance

No single tool knows everything when it comes to malicious software so you should use more than one, but you can also go overboard with too much protection and start to have performance issues. I use the free MBAM and SAS regularly alternating a few times a week when I feel like it. MBAM finds nothing, SAS finds cookies. But I always recommend starting with them first if anything is suspicious (as you saw).

There are worthwhile tips in the Slow Computer and XP Tweak sections here that are good reading too.

f you think your icons are too slow, that can be investigated but I don't know if you need to start a new thread for that or not. You seem to be "no longer infected"... maybe you just have a slow desktop refresh kind of thing. We would need more details...

This post has been edited by joseibarra: 22 December 2009 - 10:35 PM

Thanks, this has been an issue bugging me for a while, all sorted now !