Ok. I've got a version of this virus on my desktop. It's not only stopping my antivirus programs from updating, it's blocking me from accessing antivirus and anti-malware related sites from my browser. This includes not only the official sites of any anti-virus software, but also ANY SITE OR FORUM DISCUSSING FIXES FOR ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE. That has included THIS SITE, as well as just about every other site that has appeared likely to offer any help for the damn thing. Any attempt to follow links or enter the URLs of these sites results in a page-load error. I finally found this thread by linking through the cached Google files, but I couldn't post from there... don't know if I'd be able to anyway, but either way, it's error-page... oh damn, now I've said it they'll be able to fix that too, won't they? arg. Anyway, I'm typing this now from my laptop. I've since been able to download the setups for HijackThis, Spybot S&D, avast, and malwarebytes from mirror sites. Of these, only Spybot and Avast were apparently allowed to install. However, Spybot does not run. I click on the program icon, and nothing happens. Avast has installed and has been running, apparently can update normally, and has found a handful of viruses and a couple trojans, but not whatever one is blocking my updates for other spyware programs, or whatever is blocking me from accessing anti-malware sites, or whatever is sending me to spam-links from Google search results. When Avast ran its first scan after restarting the computer & before starting Windows, it said it found 1 infected file, but it could not move, delete or repair that file. It said it couldn't find the file name. Attempts to install these programs from a burned CD also seem to have been blocked, but that may or may not be because I (or possibly my computer/s) am crap at anything involving burned CDs. I'm sharing this with you mainly for your own information, because I thought you would like to know your forum and main site were being blocked. If there's any other information you might like from me, tell me what & how. If anyone can still help me, that would be much appreciated, but my friends are now mostly telling me that it's a lost cause and that I should just backup my files and reformat my hard drive. Thanks for your time.
