Viruses and Dongles

[safferon]

Hi, i presently have an infected machine but also have a newer clean one.

I use a usb dongle to connect to the internet and would like to know if its safe to use the dongle that has been in the infected machine in the new one?

Can a dongle transfere a virus/trojan/rootkit etc from one machine to another?

I do not want to use the dongle in the new machine if it can infect it

[Firefox]

Hello and

If you are refering to a usb network card or a usb wireless network card as a dongle, then no I do not believe that they can attach themselves to the device.

If the device has a flash drive with it (like you can write files to it) then it is possible that the virus can copy itself to it.

Do you have maybe a model number of the device you are talking about so we can look it up?

[safferon]

HI, on the box it says orange E1752 mobile broadband dongle

[noknojon]

Hi -

2 quick items - Main one - Do you know what your other computer is infected with ??

Next - It seems that your Wireless card looks like Read Only , so it should be OK to use if Firefox checks it out first -

If you can answer the first one quickly then it makes it clearer -

Thank You -

[Firefox]

OK i see what your talking about, those do have a small flash drive in them, but its only visable to the card, it stores the drivers for the card in it so that it can load the driver when you plug it into your computer.

Since they are write protected, you should be safe.

I would however make sure that you have anti-virus software running on your new computer.

[safferon]

hi and ty

I do not know what my old machine is infected with. I picked up a virus originally from msn and then another one later on whilst trying to download an adware removal programme from a link someone gave me.

I have avast on here that has removed some of the infection but not enough. Since the infectoin system restore does not work and i was not supplied with a full recovery disk from the manufacturer (just a drivers and applications disk). So it will be difficult to reformat her.

i do know that when i boot up the old machine on start up i get an error message telling me to check out a porn site (badgirls or something or other) and if i clik the error box it disappears and another error box which says something like timer in 10 appears. i click and it closes.

I do konw that avast seemed to thinks some windows files were infected and vaulted them.

also whilst i am here this is not virus related but i am hoping someone has some know how. The new machine is windows 7 (the old one is xp) and when i upload various programmes from a cd rom onto the windows 7 machine it installs but then will not run the programme. instead it takes me to a load of files for the programme. The files are there but the programme will not run. I have tried with several different programmes. I have even tried running updates for the programmes and also using the compatibility check but nothing seems to work.

Just wondering if someone knows why? are all the programmes i have uploaded totally incompatible with windows 7 or am i doing something wrong?

would appreciate any help

[safferon]

Sorry about the typos, its 530 am here and ive been up all night trying to make windows 7 work lol

Ps i do have a virus programme on the machine but just the one it came with which is mcaffee internet security. I dont know how good the programme is...

[safferon]

sorry forgot to specify that the new machine has mcaffee and the old one has avast free.

[noknojon]

Hi -

Lucky it is only 3.00 pm in Australia - Still wide awake -

Personally (only) I would remove the McAfee if it came pre installed as they seem to only be a "softer" version -

As in my 'live signature' I have found Microsoft Security Essentials to be very effective - If you are not 100% sure with McAfee I would switch -

Just uninstall from the program from Programs, and add the new one MSE , by clicking the link I have below -

To the installing problem , you will/may find some are not compatable when loaded that way - Post in PC Help tomorrow for detailed help -

Download Malwarebytes to the good unit and you can install it onto the infected one - If you are not in a great hurry we can usually clean the infections from the old unit , but it will involve 2-3 days minimum usually -

You can also download a manual update from Here - NOTE: This manual update will always be way behind in version level compared to updates from within the program

Thank You -