Antispyware Boot Scan–Legitimate or not?
I am running Counterspy on an XP machine. Recently, I’d quarantined a few processes, and after I shut off the computer and turned it back on, I got an "Antispyware Boot Scan" that started running. It first deleted the files I had quarantined, and then began to scan my other folders and files. After being stuck at Program Files for over an hour, though, I got fed up and forced the computer off. The next time few times I started the computer, the "Antispyware Boot scan" screen kept popping up, and even though it claimed that I could skip the scan by pressing a key within 20 seconds, no matter what keys I pressed or how many keys I pressed, the scan continued. So I’m wondering, is this a legitimate boot scan from Counterspy? Because I’d read that there were fake boot scans out there, and I didn’t know if this was legitimate or a virus. Also, why wasn’t I able to skip the scan by pressing a key within 20 seconds, even though the scan said that I could? The discrepancy between what I was theoretically able to do (press a key and skip the scan) and what I actually COULD do (pressed many keys, nothing happened) is making me question the validity and credibility of the boot scan. There was no Counterspy logo to establish the credibility of the scan, only the Windows XP logo flag. I later was able to access my account by having Windows boot with the last known safe setting, but I’m wondering whether this Boot Scan that came up was legitimate or not?
2 Responses
Dalek Draco
28 Feb 2010
michael s
28 Feb 2010
Its definetly a fake boot scan..your computer is probably infected with a trojan/fake scan..your anti-virus product should pick it up..if not if you know the name of the product you can do a search in all files and folders with the name as the search item..it will bring up all files associated with that name…from there you can delete each one and get rid of the fake scan for good…….Mike
Sounds like its not a legitimate program from:
a) not allowing you to skip with any key
b) taking ages on the program files folder (normal AV scans go through that folder fast, and get stuck on the d drive or dlls).
c) it didn’t tell you why it was doing a boot scan (unless you omitted that).
My advice would be to update and run your AV program in safe mode (tap f8 on boot) and if it comes up clean, go online and run:
-Trend Micro housecall
-Norton Securty Scan
-Panda ActiveScan2.0
One of those will find the problem, if none of them do find anything, then I’d be inclined to contact your AV provider and see whether they’ll claim the boot scan as part of their program (the 3 online AVs are very good and should find 99.9% of malware).
g/l.