1. Home
  2. QuickBooks Discussions
  3. Problems with QB2000 after "virus"

Problems with QB2000 after "virus"

Quickbooks Pro 2000 is acting funny after a "virus" attack. I use quotes because it wasn't a virus per se but one of those things that takes over your browsers. QBP2K is old but it does what I need.

Background:

XP Home w/o SP2. (IT pro friends advised against putting it on at this time.) I am on DSL, with a router/firewall and also use Tiny Personal Firewall to control connections in and out of the system.

I downloaded an mp3 via Kazaa Lite Revolution and played it while partly downloaded and my IE went nuts opening windows with ads etc. Firefox affected to a lesser extent. It was changing home pages and redirecting to ad pages.

I have run McAffee AntiVirus, Ad-Aware, installed and ran Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta, Stinger, Spybot Search & Destroy. All found various things which I deleted. I have run Hijack This and monitored Task Mgr and Software Uninstall, and studied those things that looked suspicious and deleted those that research said were malware. I have done what I can searching and removing registry keys.

The system seems normal now.

But not Quickbooks. It takes forever to open and when I click on certain functions like create or display an invoice there is a long pause and then I get an error dialog box titled "Server Busy" and says "This action cannot be completed because the other program is busy. Choose 'Switch To' to activate the busy program and correct the problem." There are then buttons for "Switch To" "Retry" and a grayed-out "Cancel" button. Hitting Retry simply brings the dialog box back. Clicking on Switch To is akin to hitting the Windows start button. Eventually I can get past this with enough tries and invoice subsystem seems normal. Closing Quickbooks also creates the same situation. I think most other functions are normal.

I was thinking maybe something simply got corrupted in the software but then again why would it even run at all? I started to reinstall it but stopped when it seemed that the installation process itself was having the same sluggishness even at the earliest stages which made me think it's more of a system problem.

But I can't find anything else wrong with the system. No mystery processes running soaking up machine time that I can see. I don't mind reinstalling QB but I hope I don't have to wipe the disk and reload Windows and everything else.

Any ideas?

Reply to
Steve Kraus
Loading thread data ...

Not knowing what you may have inadvertantly affected with the registry activity and the slim possibility that one of the malware/adware/spyware utilities flagged something pertaining to QB, I'd recommend backing up your data, moving your .qbw file to another folder, uninstalling then reinstalling the program.

Reply to
Tee

How is IE working? One of the things I don't like about QB and other Intuit software is that it uses IE for some of its functions. Not only does Intuit say that IE of a certain version MUST be installed, I have IE set for high security on my computer and when I try to open some QB windows I get a window from IE asking it this is OK. So, if this malware messed up IE it will not be enough to remove and reinstall QB.

-- Vic Roberts Replace xxx with vdr in e-mail address.

Reply to
Victor Roberts

In addition to the scans that you have run I suggest running Spysweeper also. It sounds like you got hit with one of those browser hackers. AdAware and Spybot don't target those yet.

formatting link
Go to Downloads to download trial version

Also look in msconfig>>Startup to make sure that you recognize every entry. Uncheck any that you suspect as spyware and reboot. Then re-scan your PC again with all of the scanners so that you know that everything has been removed. Reboot your machine in bwt each scan.

My daughters machine was so infected that it took 3 passes to get it all off.

Then I would back up your QB data and reinstall the software. As someone posted, QB needs IE to function. When IE gets hosed so does QB.

Reply to
Laura

Not a bad suggestion, though recent reviews puts MS product at the top of the list for catching Spyware, somewhere in the 80% range. Spysweeper is second.

It does sound as if there are some problems with the internet explorer installation. There is a option to repair IE under add/remove programs. I would check that next. I have seen systems so screwed up by Spyware/adware/Trojans that the only recourse was a complete reinstall.

Gary

Reply to
Gary

To add to Tara's reply...

Sometimes it takes a system 2-3 boots before all is well again after a virus or hijacking. At least that has been my experience and I have read about this in various NG. Worth a try before resorting to re-installing. My 2¢...

Reply to
Summer

In regard to removing the nasty items that were downloaded, did you disable system restore and go into safe mode when removing? These two conditions are a necessity to effectively remove some programs. Removing and reinstalling IE is also a good idea. Put a copy of Zone Alarm Pro on your computer and it will stop malware from dumping your financial data onto a Russian server. Not a joke, that has happened with some large financial and retail web servers.

In general, you should run:

XP Pro instead of XP Home XP configured to auto update XP Firewall turned on Current anti virus with real-time protection and auto update Hardware Firewall Zone Alarm Pro MartyM

formatting link

Reply to
MartyM

BeanSmart website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.