Exe File Has Totally & Utterly Disappeared

[Ancient Sim]

I have a really weird problem now.  Somehow I've managed to get some sort of spyware on my computer that just won't go away no matter what program I run.  It keeps trying to get me to download stuff to stop spyware (amongst other things - haha) and it's obviously disabled System Restore because it won't work, even in Safe Mode.

Anyway, since that happened, I can nio longer get into the game with either Daemon Tools or Game Jackal because my original exe file has totally disappeared off my computer.  It simply isn't there anymore.  It's gone from the EA Games folder and even the back-up has gone from the Game Jackal folder.  All the time I was playing the game this morning I was constantly sent back and forth to my desktop to go download one of these spam things, so maybe that's done it.  I can't get it back because as I reported before, my cd-drive isn't working.

The exe file is still in the file that Daemon Tools uses (the entire game I downloaded from BT), but it's got no icon, it's just one of those old-style DOS windows and brings up a DOS-type box when I click on it.  The uninstaller is the same.  Can I somehow get hold of just that file, or will I need to download the entire thing again and if so, will it work without the original exe file being in my EA Games folder?

The game loaded fine this morning, but now when I click on the shortcut it says the exe it refers to has been deleted or moved.  But I haven't deleted or moved it, so who or what has?  It's definitely not on the pc anywhere, I've done a check.  The only one that's there is the one with the funny icon (which is the right size and everything, it just won't work).

[J. M. Pescado]

Computer over? Virus = very yes? That's not a good prize!

You've been virused. It's time to reformat and reinstall.

[jrd]

It's really gone?
Keep in mind the exe is not in the game root, but in the \TSBin folder.

Short of viruses or trojans I don't know of anything that randomly deletes files (except users of course).

You state you know you have spyware... well you're fscked.
Backup, format, and reinstall.

[Ancient Sim]

I can't reinstall can I, my cd-drive doesn't work!  That's why I had to use Daemon Tools in the first place.  But why the F**K would a virus delete the Sims2EP3.exe file and nothing else?  Well it hasn't deleted it, it's still there, it just doesn't have the right icon and it keeps trying to go through DOS or whatever it is. 

I can't back-up for the same reason, I have no cd-drive, although my game files are on the second partition so they may be OK as I think a reformat only touches the part of the drive with Windows on, not sure.

Computer over? Virus = very yes? That's not a good prize!

You've been virused. It's time to reformat and reinstall.

And I don't understand this first sentence.  Have you been eating too much Chow Mein, or what?

[jsalemi]

I can't reinstall can I, my cd-drive doesn't work!  That's why I had to use Daemon Tools in the first place.  But why the F**K would a virus delete the Sims2EP3.exe file and nothing else?  Well it hasn't deleted it, it's still there, it just doesn't have the right icon and it keeps trying to go through DOS or whatever it is. 

That's what viruses do -- they stay resident in memory and mess up any program files you run.  What probably happened was that the virus was already present in your system when you started TS2, and it wrecked the .exe file while you were playing.

Just a reinstall of TS2 won't work, though -- you have to get rid of the virus first.  If an anti-virus utility won't do it, then you'll have to reformat the disk and re-install XP from scratch.

[J. M. Pescado]

And I don't understand this first sentence.  Have you been eating too much Chow Mein, or what?

Watch this....when you fix your computer.

[Ancient Sim]

HA-HA, very funny.  Anyway ... I just may have deleted it myself, on account of how I am running this program I ran before which is describing all 3 remaining Sims2 exe files as 'Heuristic Dialers', whatever they are.  It seems to think that maybe they are malware.  I did delete a Heuristic Dialer before, but it definitely wasn't the OFB exe file (I wouldn't have deleted that ... duh), but it may have been called something else with my using Daemon Tools. 

Anyway, I am downloading a new copy so presumably that will work?  If not, I am going to have to reformat and get the damn cd-drive fixed - one or the other or both.  The ridiculous thing is, apart from once I haven't played for nearly 2 weeks and this has to happen just as I feel like playing again.  Maybe I will download one of those utilities that gets deleted files back, that might be easier.  Onward and (possibly) upward ...

[J. M. Pescado]

That's probably because they are. TS2 includes a spyware functionality, which is why you should firewall it off the Internet and not let it phone home.

[Ancient Sim]

So what exactly are they spying on?  I wouldn't have thought they'd have been allowed to do something like that, isn't there some law against it?  Sounds very odd to me.

[J. M. Pescado]

So what exactly are they spying on?  I wouldn't have thought they'd have been allowed to do something like that, isn't there some law against it?  Sounds very odd to me.

Well, I'm sure the EULA grants them some kind of escape clause, plus they've cleverly disguised the activity as something likely innocent-sounding and innocuous. Also, it's only illegal if they get caught. I, however, know better. It tried to phone home. That is enough to convince me of it's obviously malicious intent. The EA packager has also reputedly packaged people's office documents. Connect the dots yourself.

[Sagana]

Ancient, although I'm bearing bad news, that sounds very much like the virus/malware/whateveritis that ate my computer. It had the same clickys for "get this to get rid of spyware" (which btw, you shouldn't click, not even "no" but only close the window or kills the process. If you touch the button, you're further infecting.) I tried tons and tons of virus programs and automatic fixes and it was embedded too deeply - they could kill parts of it, but not enough to keep it from regenning itself. I ended up reformatting and reinstalling (which meant I lost my game and downloads entire, as all backups were on the same computer - my other one having died of motherboard failure shortly before.) I suspect you'll be best off to do the same - and could it be the virus has eaten something your CD drive needs too?

Anyway, the daemon stuff being handy, a playable drive is a kinda important thing and if you can, I'd get that fixed and reinstall the operating system.

Most software - almost all types, commercial, residential, little junk and big important things, phone home anymore. Anytime windows asks you if you want to send a bug report because it crashed, it's phoning home - and when it does that, it can send along whatever information it cares to from your computer. Photoshop, Illustrator, Word - all of them dl updates and send 'bug reports' even without your express permission unless you stop 'em. The Sims does too - the net connect is up, there's a button for going straight to the BBS, it auto-starts registrations and sends bug reports. I'm with JM in that I don't *like* my programs talking on the net unless I specifically tell them to (used to be, with a modem, it was easy to cut them off - harder anymore). But it's harder to stop them anymore, it's taken for granted that they do, and I doubt seriously it's illegal.

[Ancient Sim]

Well, after several attempts with several different virus/spam removers, I finally got rid of two Trojans, a worm and a huge chunk of spyware & malware.  Finally, the messages have stopped.  I even got myself a year's free use of a rather cool virus/trojan/worm/malware monitor/remover thingy that you normally only get a month for, all because it told me I had already used-up the free trial when I'd never even heard of it until a few minutes previously.  It was actually my trustyold AVG freebie that got rid of the trojans & worm, they'd already gone when I finally got this other thing working.

Anyway, the good news is that I haven't had to reinstall Windows, which only takes about 5 mins on this pc as it's all stored on the secondary partition and I only need to press a button, but it'd mean having to download the entire game & all the expansions, which would be a pain.  The other good news is that I managed to find a copy of the UK OFB on bt and it's working perfectly.  Said at first it would take nearly a week to download, but luckily it took a lot less.  There were about 20 copies in the download for some reason, but the first one worked fine.

It wasn't just OFB in the end.  Quite a few other files with "Application" as the file type have got these DOS-type icons.  Whatever did it was quite powerful, because it kept stopping Grisoft from working, it would only work if it went straight into it after downloading, it wouldn't re-start once I'd closed it, nor could I use a couple of online virus-checkers I tried.  Couldn't get into Safe Mode either, so I couldn't remove anything that way.  I'll have to wait and see whether I can recover from it, if not I will have to reinstall because I have no System Restore points.  They weren't working anyway, but I had to close it down so I could run the virus-checkers properly, they kept finding viruses in there all the time.

Oh, and I only got the viruses this morning, so they're nothing to do with the cd-drive not working.  I got them from opeining something I downloaded from bt - the file was absolutely chock-a-block with the things.  That'll teach me to not want to pay £1

[Ancient Sim]

Well, after several attempts with several different virus/spam removers, I finally got rid of two Trojans, a worm and a huge chunk of spyware & malware.  Finally, the messages have stopped.  I even got myself a year's free use of a rather cool virus/trojan/worm/malware monitor/remover thingy that you normally only get a month for, all because it told me I had already used-up the free trial when I'd never even heard of it until a few minutes previously.  It was actually my trustyold AVG freebie that got rid of the trojans & worm, they'd already gone when I finally got this other thing working.

Anyway, the good news is that I haven't had to reinstall Windows, which only takes about 5 mins on this pc as it's all stored on the secondary partition and I only need to press a button, but it'd mean having to download the entire game & all the expansions, which would be a pain.  The other good news is that I managed to find a copy of the UK OFB on bt and it's working perfectly.  Said at first it would take nearly a week to download, but luckily it took a lot less.  There were about 20 copies in the download for some reason, but the first one worked fine.  Also half-a-dozen or more reg. keys, but I used my own and it worked perfectly.

It wasn't just OFB in the end.  Quite a few other files with "Application" as the file type have got these DOS-type icons.  Whatever did it was quite powerful, because it kept stopping Grisoft from working, it would only work if it went straight into it after downloading, it wouldn't re-start once I'd closed it, nor could I use a couple of online virus-checkers I tried.  Couldn't get into Safe Mode either, so I couldn't remove anything that way.  I'll have to wait and see whether I can recover from it, if not I will have to reinstall because I have no System Restore points.  They weren't working anyway, but I had to close it down so I could run the virus-checkers properly, they kept finding viruses in there all the time.

Oh, and I only got the viruses this morning, so they're nothing to do with the cd-drive not working.  I got them from opeining something I downloaded from bt - the file was absolutely chock-a-block with the things.  Most stuff on there is OK I think, but obviously the odd fake is going to slip through and ya takes ya chances, I guess.

But, all's well that ends well, or sort of.  Still have the cd-drive problem, but at least I know I can get hold of the almost-here-but-presumably-still-non-existent furry expansion.  Probably just as well, that way I can test it out first because I'm very unsure about it.  I don't even play OFB anymore, it was just too boring and there were too many things about it that drove me crazy, like guests running off whenever there was a home business on the lot and that sort of thing.  All I really like about it is the lifts.

[Sagana]

Even though it looked clean, mine auto-started when I restarted the computer, or switched users. It was stuck somewhere in the startup files. Just a note to try that and scan again before you decide it's completely gone.

That said, <megacheers> on getting rid of the damn thing! And welcome back to sims life and times :)

[DrBeast]

HijackThis is a very useful tool for getting rid of remnants of baddies stuck in the startup menu and/or the registry.

[Ancient Sim]

HijackThis was one of the programs I ran during my clean-up campaign, but it didn't find anything.  So far so good, no sign of those pesky pop-ups anymore and everything seems to be working normally.  My new program alerts me whenever anythng tries to worm its way in and so far it's only picked-up on one thing.  I am keeping it running all the time now, to be on the safe side.  I had a tendency to turn my virus-checker off when I was playing the game, so it wasn't on when I got this virus, which is my own fault really, otherwise AVG would have stopped it.

[jrd]

It is pretty stupid to turn off your virus scanner, unless you also completely sever any net connections and have done a complete scan beforehand.

Glad you have gotten a working system back.

[J. M. Pescado]

It is pretty stupid to turn off your virus scanner, unless you also completely sever any net connections and have done a complete scan beforehand.

I don't use virus scanners much, they disagree with my pets.

[dizzy]

A virus scanner will do absolutely no good if you get one of those kernel-infecting viruses. The only solution in that case is to wipe and reinstall.