how-to-remove-orkut-is-banned-virus

A few months ago, while surfing the net and trying to open Orkut i got a strange message on my computer screen which said “Orkut is banned you fool, The administrators didnt write this program guess who did?? MUHAHAHA!!” and the browser closed. I didnt think it was a virus as i had AVG installed on my system and i had faith in it. I tried it on different machines which were part of the Local Area Network and each gave the same message while opening Orkut and Youtube. Each machine had AVG or Norton installed. I ran an Antivirus scan and it also didnt detect any virus or spyware. I decided to search on the net for this problem and thats when i discovered that my computer was infected with the W32.USBWorm virus which displayed such messages while opening Orkut and Youtube. Here are a few simple steps which you can follow to remove this virus if this has infected your system too.

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o Open the Task Manager by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del and go to processes tab
o Locate svchost.exe under the image name. There will be many processes by that name but look for the ones which have your username under the username. Just kill these processes by pressing Del key.Only kill those which have your username under the username and leave the rest
o Open the run command and type C:\heap41a and press enter. This is a hidden folder. Delete all the contents of this folder
o Open the registry by typing regedit in the run box
o Search for heap41a in the registry by using the find command
o You will get something like this “[winlogon] C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap(some number)\std.txt“. Just delete the entries by pressing the del key
o Close the registry editor

Now the virus will be gone. The virus mainly spreads through USB disks so be sure to delete Autorun.inf file and any folder which has a .exe extension in the pen drive you use. Avast and Nod32 are able to detect it. Even AVG, Norton and macfee failed to detect it.

The above mentioned are not guaranteed to work everytime. In one of my machines, the virus disabled the Task Manager and registry editor also so i was unable to perform the above steps. In such cases, try doing a full system scan with Avast in the boot mode and delete all files which are infected. If a lot of system files get infected, then you would have to format your computer to remove it successfully. The viruse also spreads quicly through Flash drives and Local Area Network so always scan the flash disks in such cases.

With so many viruses being discovered everyday, it becomes difficult to protect your PC completely. The best you can do prevent such things is to use an Antivirus and keep it updated. Have you ever been infected by this virus? What measures do you use to protect your PC from such malwares?

copied from http://www.whoismadhur.com/2007/11/16/how-to-remove-orkut-is-banned-virus/