Folders Duplicating with .exe

PuP · September 22, 2008, 6:43pm

Saturday Night was the last time i saw my Comp behaving normally . After that it was all f****d up .

All my folder’s are duplicating inside themselves with an exe .

Like if there’s an folder NFSMW in D drive , NFSMW creates another folder NFSMW inside itself with an exenstion exe.Its afftected to all my drives .

Some of these can be deleted whereas some not( access denied) . Its not possible for me to delete all folders manually.

After some googling on this i found a program called Clone Remover . But clone remover only removes the folders temporary. After 10-15min all those folders are again created .

Ive formatted windows as well . But still no solutions. Its really serious for me I’ve got 800Gb storage and all my drives are affected

Anish1 · September 22, 2008, 6:46pm

its called the Win32.pinfi virus. reinstalling windows will not do anything if it has spread throughout the hdd

PuP · September 22, 2008, 6:48pm

What should i do then ?

techie_007 · September 22, 2008, 6:54pm

scan using a good antivirus and then an anti-spyware? I thought that was self explanatory

I would suggest Antivir and spybot. Both are free

m0h1t · September 22, 2008, 6:56pm

I had this in one of my P3 machines till a month ago, spreads quite rapidly and will attach itself to any removable drive.

Tried to clean it up with eset and more but all in vein.

I only had ~3GB of important documents on the system which I copied onto a pendrive.

Cleaned the pendrive on my current system with ESET 3.0.XXX, did a fantastic job. Formatted the infected HDD and reinstalled WinXP.

p.s. - you could try a portable eset nod32 or for that matter any portable antivir, this would allow you to skip all installation hassle’s.

mathew_p_a · September 22, 2008, 7:00pm

Here is a link for you to download a fix

Cleaning Utility for Win32.Pinfi - CA

Reboot to safemode and run it.

The details about the virus from the Symantec site follows

###########
Discovered: October 11, 2001
Updated: February 13, 2007 11:42:23 AM
Also Known As: Win32.Parite.a [KAV], W32/Pate.a [McAfee], Win32.Pinfi.A [CA], PE_PARITE.A [Trend], W32/Parite-A [Sophos], Win32/Parite.A [RAV]
Type: Virus
Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows XP
W32.Pinfi is a memory-resident polymorphic virus that will infect the .EXE and .SCR files. This virus can also spread via mapped drives and network shares.
Protection

* Initial Rapid Release version October 12, 2001
* Latest Rapid Release version September 13, 2008 revision 022
* Initial Daily Certified version October 12, 2001 revision 007
* Latest Daily Certified version September 13, 2008 revision 021
* Initial Weekly Certified release date October 17, 2001

Click here for a more detailed description of Rapid Release and Daily Certified virus definitions.
Threat Assessment
Wild

* Wild Level: Low
* Number of Infections: More than 1000
* Number of Sites: More than 10
* Geographical Distribution: High
* Threat Containment: Moderate
* Removal: Moderate

Damage

* Damage Level: Low

Distribution

* Distribution Level: Medium

################

Anish1 · September 22, 2008, 7:49pm

^^ :lol: you are lucky if it works for you.. i tried the same on my system and somehow it got converted to .exe from .com the moment i ran it.. and it got eaten by the virus. Eventually, i had to format the entire drive. Am not scaring you but thats the way it went for me :|.. good luck

alsiladka · September 22, 2008, 8:35pm

Dont worry, scan via Kaspersky or ESET Nod32.

If not solved, download a portable edition of ClamWin from PortableApps.com - Portable software for USB drives and run a scan in the safe mode.

Supra · September 22, 2008, 9:00pm

One thing for sure…all your rar / self extracting files / .exes are gone

geek_ashish · September 23, 2008, 2:44am

spybot sd and avg free version should do it.

Naga · September 23, 2008, 7:53am

Nothing like that. Don’t use any other tool to clean the drives. An updated Avast boot-scan has helped me repair/ recover lotsa instances of the same situation. After the boot scan is over, run SD Fix to reset any registry changes. Disable auto run and scan/ fix all ur pen drives. Make sure show hidden files/system files is activated and enter all removable drives thru the address bar. Delete any suspicious files/*.infs from the pen drives which the Avast scan might have missed.

avi_avadhut · September 23, 2008, 8:03am

mcafee 8.5+ mcafee antispyware edition combo solved this problem for me.
formating is not the solution… scan entire system and configure mcafee in maximum protection mode and exclusive scanning.