Hi Everyone

It appears that quite a few members on the site got hit by an MSN Messenger virus that swept through their contact lists tonight.

Some people found they received a message from someone in their own contact list with a link that contained their own email address. If they clicked on this link it would then infect them with this virus and spread it through their own contact list as well.

If you were infected by this virus there is a fix available which clears up the problem. I have hosted it here to make it easy for people to find and use.

www.dond.co.uk/impfix.zip

Click on the link to download the fix then extract and run the program. This will then heal the problem.

This would not have affected you through browsing this site, it only affected some members who have exchanged MSN contact details. I am posting the fix here as I know quite a few members do exchange contact details to chat over MSN, so it could have potentially spread through members of the site.

I got this from one member, clicked on it, but when it asked me if I wanted to open the .exe file, I thought "Wait a minute..." and pressed Cancel.

Not sure if that means I still had it or not...should I try the file anyway?

On some systems it seems to auto-install as soon as you click the link While on others like yours it would ask if you wanted to open or save the file, if you clicked cancel you will be fine.

You can run the program to be on the safe and it will clear any posssible infection and won't do any harm

God am I glad I wasn't online last night

Same here.

Thanks for the heads up anyway Kes

Cheers Kes, I think i might have been infected, hopefully its gone now

Everybody around me did - I didn't though

I avoided it because it said whether I wanted to open this .exe file.

nice one, i dont have messenger just yet so i was unharmed.

Sure McAfee security thingy would have killed the virus off anywauy

thanks for the tip tho kes, much appreciated

I installed it (the virus) without thinking, I was busy reading at the time and my usual "hold on this ain't right" thought didn't come to me

Oh, and by the way although this program gets rid of the main problem of the virus - it still leaves harmful data entries in the Hosts file on your computer. To solve that, do the following....


1. Click "Start" (bottom left of screen) and choose "Run" (bottom right of menu).

2. Highlight the following link: c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts.msn
And then right click the highlighted area and click "Copy". In the box which appears when you complete Step 1, right click and choose "Paste".

3. Press "OK" and choose the option "Select the program from a list". When the list comes up, double click "Notepad".

4. A notepad file should open. Go to the first row starting WITHOUT a # symbol. You need to delete everything from that point onwards, EXCEPT for the row entitled "127.0.0.1 local host".

5. Save the file and all done.