This is putting me in the worst mood, from the moment I boot my computer, A program called winknxn is running and taking ALL of my resources, my computer is running so slow it takes a second for text to come up when I type! WTF I searched files and folders, I searched Google, and I searched regedit
This is pissing me off so bad, a few other programs were doing this that could only be found in the registry, but I got those to stop, but this isn't even in my registry, I just formatted and reinstalled 2k so this ****ing **** wouldn't happen, what do I do?

Dude, try knocking "Win" off the search... I did one in google, minus the "Win" and came back with 10 pages of stuff...

A lot of it is radio stations, but there were also references to power point...

Anyway... Good luck

I read an article recently that the latest win 2k service pack installs that service on bootleg copies of win 2k. Let me see if I find more info on it.

Oops, turns out that story I read was false. winknxn is a strain of the klez virus. It's probably the H variant. You can tell that is is the klez virus because all the variants install a file called wink***.exe. The *** are random letters. Here is some info on it.

w32.klez.h@mm

That might explain a few things.
I burned a "non illegal" copy though
(I don't want to go to jail!)

Skew, I was thinking virus as well, but I tried a search in Norton's on-line Virus encyclopedia, and kept coming back empty...

Cool ya found it!

I'm not suprised you came up empty DS. Because I've found that all the different virus programs name the different viruses...differently. Actually, I am somewhat suprised that it didn't recognize that saying as Klez is the big virus now and usually the name differences are found in the lesser known viruses. Then again, it's also got so many aliases. Ah who knows, ya got a virus, get rid of it and you should be all good

You know it's funny...cus a while back on my dad's computer (when I didn't have my own) after a while it would start coming up with odd illegal operations for no apparent reason. It started out as sometimes it wouldn't at all, sometimes it would only come up once or twice, and then it started doing it right as the computer was booted which began to become a pain. This was all over the course of a few months too...only to find that the computer actually had a worm32 virus for all that time.. so many corrupted files...so we just replaced the files by snatching them off another windows 98 machine and all better!

Kinda funny that you could run your computer with the virus going in the first place...it's better than using burn-in by SiSoft Sandra! Wee haw!

I looked over at symantec and they offer a klez removel utility. Hey its worth a try

Symantec

Cool.
It worked for most of the infected files, but it doesn't know what to do with important ones like explorer.exe
If you guys sent me a copy of yours(or anyone) would that be just fine or would that **** everything up?

Actually, many viruses run without you even knowing. Especially worms. If you have a destructive virus, you'll know immediately, and most likely it'll be on it's warpath, maybe very damaging already. But most viruses I've seen come across people's computers are sneaky little things that either try to take personal information on the computer, take the password list on the computer, or it keylogs and sends the keylog to the virus maker.

As for fixing those more important files, you're going to need a full virus scanner to pick up and fix those files or tell ya they can't be fixed which would require either two actions:

1.) Replace them with working versions (This may be hard, especially with any critical update, etc. This could cause lots of problems)

2.) Rebuild the computer (Recommended)

The reason I recommend rebuilding the computer after getting a virus is just so you feel safe knowing it's not there pulling off something else malicious. Also, if you do take step one, you may not be doing anything. You can't replace explorer.exe and important files like that while in windows, so you'd have to reboot and replace them in dos. The only problem with that is, the virus (I don't know about Klez, but this is a general response) may have a secret exe somewhere on your computer that the virus scanner/remover is not picking up. When you reboot, the secret exe may just infect those important files again. You see this a lot with viruses that attack files on the users computer.

Anyways, here's a free virus scanner, and I've heard it's quite good actually. I'm sure it will handle Klez. AVG Anti-Virus

Quote: Originally posted by Hgoale 2.) Rebuild the computer (Recommended)

Hgoale is right, the best and most failsafe way to get rid of a virus is to reformat your harddrive and reinstall windoze, This way you know the virus is kaput. Goodluck to ya. Run whatever virus scanner you have(make sure it is fully update with the latest virus definations). And that should repair explorer.exe.