Trojan.Downloader
 

My PC has become infected with the Trojan.Downloader trojan - in spite of having an up-to-date Norton Antivirus and Zone Alarm Pro installed. Norton Antivirus completely fails to detect it, although Symantec's site does contain instructions for removing the trojan manually. Unfortunately though.... the instructions don't work!

At least once per day my PC will try to access sites without me instigating anything. Fortunately, at least one of these is an ftp site so Zone Alarm kicks in as soon as ftp.exe gets launched (that's usually how I know it's happening). Either that, or a Windows popup appears telling me that vital system files have been replaced by unauthorised versions. It then asks for the Windows XP CD so that it can restore the files to their original versions but even that doesn't seem to fx the problem. A day or two later, it'll be back...!

Symantec's web site recommends turning off System Restore while dealing with this trojan. In my view this is bad advice because turning it back on again deletes any previous restore points - making it impossible to return to a previously known good state.

Does anyone have any definitive instructions for defeating this pest?

i'd follow any instructions sites like symantec or microsoft give you. You could get adaware www.lavasoft.de and spybot search and destroy http://www.safer-networking.org/ and get maybe try deleting stuff like ftp.exe :/

Re: Trojan.Downloader
 

i hate that little bastard. clear out all but your most recent restore point.

It took me forever to get rid of it but I eventually did. Then I got re-infected about 2 weeks ago. However, joy of joys, the latest virus updates for Norton Antivirus seem to have detected it and zapped it. 8)