How to Remove…

The Orkut Virus which also affects the U-Tube and the Mozilla Firefox

Have you experienced the new ORKUT virus which is quite annoying ? It does not allow the words Orkut or Utube to be typed on the address bar of your IE window. The browser simply closes the first time. But from the second time, strange messages come with the violent laugh MUHAHAHAHAHA!

The virus creates an svchost.exe file which is memory resident and does the above task of preventing Orkut users. The svchost.exe is an essential file for the switching on of any WinXP computer and if it is damaged then the computer will not boot.

But this svchost file comes with the user-process rather than the system process. So, when you open the Task Manager, and view the processes, the user name will be your user-name and NOT SYSTEM, NOT NETWORK etc.

If you find such svchost.exe then your computer is infected with Orkut virus.

Prevention

The virus travels through Flash-drives. The Flash or Pen-drive will have a new file, Microsoftpowerpoint.exe which when double-clicked spreads the virus. therefore whenever you find such file, just don’t open but delete it.

Removal

To remove the virus, open the Task Manager, by pressing Ctrl-Alt-Delete and examine the processes. There will be several svchost.exe files. Ignore them and focus on svchost.exe with username as your username. (Sometimes it may be administrator if you have not created a user name at all).

End such svchost process by selecting it and clicking “End Process”. Then type orkut in the explorer’s address bar and nothing will happen.

Then goto system32 folder, identify svchost.exe file with a prefix icon H and delete it.

Then run regedit and search for “heap” repeatedly and delete all “heap” folders and values. The virus stands removed.