Don’t you find it annoying when a contact (its a computer, not the real person sending you the link) sends you a link that looks perfectly realistic and you download it to find it’s actually a messenger “virus”.
I was a victim of one today and they are absolutely mind boggling. You don’t initially know they are what they are, but when you do they are enough to send you insane.
I had one of the most annoying ones today. You may want to know this as a warning. If you get a link from someone saying the following:
foto http://site.facebooky.net/ and then what looks like an image link with your email address on the end, do NOT open the link or download the attached file.
It’s one that spams all your contacts with the same link but with their email address, and then freezes your mouse so their is nothing you can do about it. When it’s finished driving all your friends mad with spam links, it hands the mouse back for 5 minutes, and then repeats itself again.
In the end I decided all I could do was wait until it wanted to spam everyone again, and then turn off the wifi adapter so it couldnt send any messages. Once it decided it couldn’t send anything and handed the mouse back, I checked the task manager for suspicious files.
One file in particular caught my eye: fxstaller.exe
A quick Google search found that this was the file causing the problem, and that many other people were having the same issue.
The file hides itself away in C:/Windows and although Windows reports it being there, it wont show up since its hidden. The best way i decided to kill it was (in Windows Vista) open up the start menu, search fxstaller.exe (but NOT pressing Enter) and when the file was listed, right click it and delete. And that ended my woes.
If you have the issue, that’s how you fix it.
It’s no problem, glad its fixed now. 🙂
Thank u guys allllllll alot…..i was stupid enough to fall for it cuz it was from a close freind but the trick worked…………honestly thanx……
i was on msn talking to people when one of my friends started messaging me with a bunch of comments saying :p foto site.hi5photo.net blah blah with my email at the end and it said it was a picture jpeg i think anyway i click it and it asked me to save it and with out thinking i did that and when it finished i opened and nothing happened after that i started thinking again and relaized it was a .exe file not a picture so i automaticly thought it was a virus i deleted the program that i downloaded by accident after words my dailoge bocks would close out and i would get quick flashes of different dailoge bocks and i could not access any of my friends that were online so i logged off and and signed back in and i got a couple of my friends saying they got the same message with their email at the end of the link. I automaticly told them not to click. then i talked to the guy who gave me that and i asked him about it he told be he got rid of it the same way you did but its not working for me so now it happens all the time but it seems that its not as bad as before.
Yes, that’s the exact same problem I had. However, I can’t understand that it won’t show up for you. What I did was, wait for all the messenger boxes to come up and when they are, disconnect yourself from the internet (you probably wont have mouse control, so if you can you will need to unplug and internet connection or turn off your router). When the program finds it cannot send messages, it will stop but not end the process. As soon as you get mouse control back, open up task manager and check again for fxstaller.exe, and also search for it again.
Do you find anything then? If you do, just proceed to deleting the file and all should be well again.
Seems odd.
Are you sure its the same problem I had? Did you originally get a message from a contact saying foto site.facebooky.net… ?
Seems weird that its untrackable and cant be found.
Can you give any details of what happens in order?
no i can not see it processing and each time i seach for it it never finds it and iam allowing to view hidden files. and everything
When it starts sending messages, can you see the process fxstaller.exe in the task manager?
If you can see it there, right click on it and click Properties. It [should] tell you that it’s in the System32 folder. If it does, it is probably hidden in there, but will be a hidden file so you’ll probably need to set Windows to show hidden files and folders.
hello i had the exact same promblem as you did but when i tryed to do what you did fxstaller.exe does not show up anywhere no matter how i do it. do you have anyother of doing it??
i had an annoying link sent to my email today. i was on google and my friend sent me a link for my igoogle homepage. when i clicked the link, a new browser window appeared. because i like all my webpages that im useing in browsert window, i closed the window and then it opened another browser window and LOADS of new tabs appeared. whenever i tried to close the window, it repeated itself. in the endi had to use a keyboard shortcut to log off and i had to log back on again
In response to your comment, I have also had this issue before in the past, although I was never able to track it back to a virus or any other form of “badware”. I always linked it back to an issue with Internet Explorer, however I may do some research into the issue know I know I’m not the only one who has had the problem. Did the problem occur in Internet Explorer?
“The closest I’ve been was I clicked the link, but when they ask me to open / save, I clicked cancel.” Yes but I didn’t initially notice that it was a spam virus, that’s why I posted about it. I would have cancelled it if I’d have known.
And for the wifi switch, I did yes, when it started sending messages so I could track the program when it was sending messages.
Yehh that was tricky. I never fell for these before.
The closest I’ve been was I clicked the link, but when they ask me to open / save, I clicked cancel.
And why did you “wait until it wanted to spam everyone again, and then turn off the wifi adapter so it couldnt send any messages”??!! Can’t you turn off the wifi adapter straight from the wifi switch on your laptop?