Microsoft alert ?
 

I woke up to this today ....

Microsoft Security Essentials alert.

You may be a victim of software counterfeiting, Microsoft Security Essentials will stop working in 30 days. To continue using Microsoft Security Essentials and help protect your computer against malware, your copy of Microsoft Windows must be validated as genuine.

To learn how to get genuine Windows click 'Go on line and resolve now'.

Go online and resolve now. < link.

Anyone else get this .. fortunately I was awake enough not to click on it.
Cheers.

It could very easily be malware, but most likely is a legit prompt.

Rather than take the risk clicking on the link, use the Windows Update (or it may be "Microsoft Update" if you have other MS products on the computer) built into your Start>>Programs menu and within that environment let the Genuine Windows applet update itself, after which Windows/Microsoft Update will also offer you updates on Windows (and other MS apps), including Security Essentials.

Pete .. the wording didn't look right to me, and the 'close now' button sent the message slowly down the screen.

Oy. Definitely don't click the link (which of course you already know not to do).

I'd say don't run your browser for the time being, do run a full virus scan with MSE, do the Microsoft updating as I suggested, and repeat scanning. As added insurance, delete all temp internet files (for IE8, it is Tools>>Internet Options>>General tab) and try downloading another security suite and do a deep scan on your system. FWIW, I use ZoneAlarm on some of my computers so I know you can get a full-version 15-day free trial download of that.

One trick that worked for me when my work laptop got a nasty virus a while back was to pull the drive, plug it into an older, non-critical computer as a non-OS drive, and do a scan. Without the affected drive being involved in the boot process, the security software was able to do its thing, whereas while the HDD was being used as a boot drive in the affected laptop, the virus protected itself.

That trick is a good, one, and now I've used it a few times to "save" a terminally infected machine - by pulling the drive and doing a virus scan after hooking it up to another machine (I've got an external USB interface), you keep the virus from hiding itself... and cleaning is a relatively simple task at that point...

Vundu in particular seems capable of morphing on the fly, thus frustrating efforts to eradicate it, but the above trick makes it easy to snuff out!

I've had similar problems lately. I'm glad I ran into this thread, because most things I've tried up until now haven't worked very well. Great suggestions. I'll definitely try when I get home from work :P

I only use Kaspersky and have NEVER had a virus while using it, which is very contrary to craptastic Norton. The only downside to Kaspersky is false positives but they are very rare. For example, the new 64bit Red Giant plugins for Adobe trigger Kaspersky, but this is the ONLY false positive I have had in the last year. FYI, its free and fully functional for 30 days. I chose it because its rated the best.

In case you don't find anything, my mother had a similar problem a week or so ago where her Windows 7 said it was not a legit copy after an update even though it is. It was fixed via Restore.

However, IE should NOT be used except on the safest of sites. I use Firefox with "AdBlock", "FlashBlock" and "NoScript" - all free add-ons via Mozilla's site. AdBlock prevents those annoying ads that aren't pop-ups so you can't easily close them. FlashBlock prevents any Flash object from loading but you can permanently allow certain sites (ie youtube/vimeo) or just click on a big "F" to allow on a site by site basis. NoScript is the most powerful as it doesn't allow any sort of scripting from Java to Flash to load. It also works like FlashBlock in allowing certain sites permanently or temporarily.

Using the above setup, I can go to a normal site like ebay, have ebay fully allowed, click on a 'bad' link within ebay and whatever site it takes me to will have everything blocked except for text. These days, you can't trust any site completely. Case in point: several years ago, someone was able to get ebay Germany transferred to another server that the bad guys controlled, and it wasn't hard for them at all at the time.

The first thing I do when fixing someone's infected PC is download Malewarebytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/ and SuperAntiSpyware http://www.superantispyware.com/

Both are free and will clean 99% of whats out there. However, for some reason, Kaspersky won't allow itself to be installed if these 2 apps are already installed; so, I just install Kaspersky first and these 2 apps.

If you can't hook up your infected drive to another PC, I found that these 3 apps work just fine to completely clean a PC. As a side job, I do IT (design small office systems/networks) and my last client uses me for anything IT related now. Just 2 months ago, he had a stupid census worker at his office using one of his workstations, and guess what, majorly infected. Maybe he used to work in the SEC wink wink.