What is this? Help!

[Ron Goodenow]

My wife's laptop has developed the PE_1445 virus, apparently contained
in an e-mail (she seldom uses the laptop, but is on a trip and was
reading mail mainly from people she knows).

Does anyone know anything about this virus? It appears (though I cannot
see the laptop) that it may have disabled the ability of her virus
checker (Trend-Micro with Fix-It Utilities) to clean it up.

Ideas welcome. Thanks.

[Shannon Orem]

Ron Goodenow <rkg...@charter.net> wrote in news:3E36D7F8.4000701
@charter.net:

Hi Ron!

> My wife's laptop has developed the PE_1445 virus, apparently contained
> in an e-mail (she seldom uses the laptop, but is on a trip and was
> reading mail mainly from people she knows).

Sorry to hear that.

>
> Does anyone know anything about this virus? It appears (though I cannot
> see the laptop) that it may have disabled the ability of her virus
> checker (Trend-Micro with Fix-It Utilities) to clean it up.

What makes you think she has a virus? Did Trend Micro (PC-cillin) tell her
she had a virus? Is the antivirus disabled, or just unable to clean the
virus from the infected files? What OS is this laptop running?

I checked the Trend Micro online virus database and they don't seem to have
a PE_1445 in their encyclopedia. Is that the full name? If you believe that
the antivirus on her machine may have been disabled, you should have her
run an online virus scan.

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

This should at least give you a the full name of the virus, so you can find
further information about it. Unfortunately it doesn't have any cleaning
capabilities, but if you can figure out what you're dealing with you can
possibly find a removal tool for the virus you could use.

I would personally recommend booting off of a known clean bootable disk,
and then scanning with f-prot for dos on it. That may be a little difficult
since you can't put your hands on it.

> Ideas welcome. Thanks.

You're welcome, and good luck!

Sincerely,
Shannon Orem

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[Ron Goodenow]

Thanks to Shannon and OB for their help. I mistakenly labeled the virus as PE_1445, when it should be PE.SPACES.1445. So much for getting virus info over the phone! I'll have the computer tomorrow and will see what can be done. It feels like some *.exe files were corrupted, affecting the virus cleaner and MS Office. Given that my wife runs very few programs on the laptop I suspect my best course of action may be to reformat and reload. I've downloaded f-prot and will try that first, but if the *.exe files are corrupted I might have to just bite the bullet and start over. What is really curious is how she got this, given that she only opened a few e-mail messages, mainly from colleagues at the public agency where she works, and which generally is very good at virus blocking.

/ron