PC help! Logged off wrong password, Windows XP
 

I'm not well versed in PC viruses but I think this could be important. Last night I was just surfing facebook before I fell asleep with my HP windows xp netbook, I left it on and when I woke up in the middle of the night I saw that it was on the homescreen which was strange to begin with, but 5am i'm not so alert... But anyways I proceed to enter my password and it says it is incorrect. So i'm like... o h f u c k...

Luckily I have no personal files on this netbook that would be a hacker's delight. It's only for facebook/msn/mundane internet surfing... not even youtube LOL
Since I found this out I changed all my fb/email passwords.

What is the next step to take?

If you think you've been hacked, then the very first thing you should do is turn off/disable your wireless or any network connection. If there's no connection to the Internet, then there's no way for them to connect to your machine so you've reduced their chances of doing any further damage.

After that, run a virus scan and malware check. See what it cleans off. If you're adventurous, just blow away and reinstall the OS. That way, there's no chance of any traces of whatever malicious software being left behind to wreak further havoc.

You can't do anything about what's already been done. You just have to prevent any further attempts to access your machine.

Just curious as to wether anyones experienced this before.
How do I go about reinstalling the os. There really aren't any files on here that I need to keep
It seems like the virus acted on a timer or something because I didn't do anything but turn it on and log on facebook yesterday.
Also I can't log in to xp because it keeps saying my password Is incorrect :(
Posted via RS Mobile

Do you have a recovery CD (or a recovery partition) for the machine? That's probably the easiest. If not, then you'll need a copy of XP that corresponds to the key you have and install it manually.

There are tool to reset the password if you want to try that route. Just Google XP password reset. It's a little involved, so if you're not comfortable with doing what they are recommending, I'd just do a reinstall.

Xp password reset steps:

Restart computer
Boot into safe mode
Login as administrator (requires no password)
Control panel-user accounts
Change user account details as needed
Reboot into normal mode
Posted via RS Mobile

^ most administrator in XP setup requires no password because it was simply left out. Some small % of computer does have admin password.

ilvtofu, are you sure the cap lock is off?

^ that's exactly what I was thinking as well. Perhaps when you dozed off you randomly hit the caps lock key.

are you sure you're even entering your password correctly?

since u have nothing important on the harddrive do a full reinstall of windows xp would be the easiest option and probably the fastest after researching how to remove a password. ur netbook does not have a optical drive so buy one from best buy and return it when your done. hopefully u know someone with a copy of xp or torrent it:D

ilvtofu: I got a USB optical drive if you want to borrow it to reinstall XP.

I'd check to see if there's a recovery partition first. Recover off that if it's available since it would be the fastest method. There's also plenty of tutorials on how to create a bootable USB drive with XP or Windows 7 if you want to do that.

naw i typed the password correctly, interestingly enough my brother's account which has no password can be accessed without a problem, now the thing is now that I can get in as an admin, what do I do to remove any potential viruses?

Windows 7 sounds awesome
And I do have an optical drive :)

However my main computer is an imac so would downloading windows 7 be more complicated as it might not be able to read many of the files

^ well you should be downloading some kind of .ISO type format, so it should be just fine.

If you can get in, then change your password to something you know, and log in. Hopefully you should already have a virus scanner. If not, download one. AVG, Avira, MS Security Essentials...anything is better than nothing. Scan for viruses first. Make sure it's clean. Then give it another run with Malwarebytes Anti Malware. If you want to be extra sure, download Spybot Search and Destroy and immunize and scan your machine. That should clean up 99% of the problems you have. If there's nothing critical on there, I still think you should blow away the OS and start from scratch. That's really the only way of knowing for sure that you don't have any type of spyware, malware or virus infection.

Like Underscore mentioned, if you download Windows 7, it's going to be an iso. Download, burn and throw it in the CD ROM drive. If you want to create a bootable USB, then you'll need to mount it with PowerIso or Daemon Tools and copy the install files to a USB drive.

You don't need to fully reinstall XP. You can reset the password on the install by going into a recovery console and opening up the user account management screen and forcibly reset the password as a system admin would on a windows domain.

Edit: here: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/remark,14828505

restart,
spam f8
safe mode with command prompt,
in command prompt type in netuser "your username" *
proceed in entering your new password. (it won't show any characters but it is registering)
restart.

I think AVG was one of the things that messed up my computer to begin with, about 2 months ago it wasn't letting me use anything on my computer saying that my trial was over or something along those lines >.< but I'll definitely try spybot etc. thanks :)

^ oh geez, you probably tried Pro and forgot to switch to Free. If you have a legit install use Microsoft Security Essentials. I know some people prefer AVG but imo MSE is a lot easier for those that aren't quite as savvy with stuff like that.

AVG had 9 for free. It asks re-new every year. Just install new one over the old one which will automatically remove the old one.

however, there are many virus targeting AVG now. Some of the web banner looks exactly like AVG and if you click on it, that's all.

however, most virus like that disable you from exceuting programs, not changing your password. In your case, if your brother's account is ok, then I can't think it's the virus or hacker.

Use hijackthis and msconfig to remove all unnecessary programs. If you can't even use those 2, then you have virus for sure.