Vista Review

The Fotomoto Virus has become prevalent lately – especially on Windows Vista PC’s. Don’t think it not just as bad (or worse) infecting Windows XP as well. I’m going to show you how to remove the Fotomoto virus, also known as Win32/Fotomoto, Trojan.Fotomoto.h, TR.Fotomoto.F.1, and Trojan.Fotomoto.f.

In the last year I’ve been pretty lucky on my Windows Vista laptop. I removed McAfee Internet Security because the trial expired and I refused to pay money for a product that both slowed down my PC and was inadequate. I opted instead to go with Windows Firewall, AVG Free AntiVirus, and nothing else. My family and I use this living room laptop for most everything, and the four of us know what “NOT” to click on. I can’t remember really getting any virus on a PC in the household over the last 3-4 years. But there are drawbacks to having a “living room laptop” – and that is when people come over they also use it.

So I’m not sure when or how it happenned, but sometime in the last 2 weeks one of the people that came over used the laptop and clicked on something bad. I didn’t know about it for a few days after they left – and there were multiple people in the house that weekend. Two things occured, and one was that I know (the teens) were watching some of the most horrid little videos online from some NSFW (not safe for work) type video sites. I also know that someone downloaded some type of video on a torrent behind my back. Either one of these events could have caused some BS to infect my nice little Vista laptop.

I normally don’t use IE at all, but I noticed I had a problem when every time I opened an explorer window or a folder a got an IE popup with an ad. This is of course no problem in Firefox, but since IE is tied so closely to the OS – especially in Vista, you can’t even open the control panel without getting a popup ad. I open Windows Defender and it’s telling me that I have the “Win32/Fotomoto” virus, or trojan, malware, adware, whatever – it’s officially a problem. When you tell Windows Defender to remove or quarantine Win32/Fotomoto it says it does. And than later in the day you get popups again (it can’t remove it). Since I don’t use IE much at all I just lived with this problem for about a week. It was no bother in Firefox or my Thunderbird email. But anytime I upzipped a file, opened a folder, control panel, advert popups displayed again.

I downloaded the old trusty Spyware Search & Destroy – and it also said it removed Fotomoto, but it did not. I downloaded Hijack This from Trend Micro and removed the startup lines (for advanced users only) that I believed to be the problem, and it only made matters worse. On reboot, when the virus tried to load (when you opened IE, or a folder) all the desktop icons disappeared and the windows taskbar, startbar, and tray all completely disappeared. You could still use the programs open, but when you closed them you just had the desktop background with nothing else. You could only ctl-alt-del to “log off” (which brought everything back) or reboot.

So now I have an official problem. I do some more research and find that Win32/Fotomoto, Trojan.Fotomoto.h, and TR.Fotomoto.F.1, and Trojan.Fotomoto.f, Vundo, and Virtumonde, are all related variants. Fotomoto is listed as variant of “B2Search” or eZula. Basically something convinved a user on my computer to install malicious software to popup ads from various sources. Yep – that described it alright. Read this definition of Trojan.Fotomoto.H – isn’t that nasty?? Nasty as hell! This Fotomoto thing turns out to just be the latest in the never ending versions of the Virtumonde virus or trojan.

If you get Fotomoto or any of it’s variants you would have symptoms like this:

• browser hijacks
• desktop hijacks
• incessant pop-ups and redirects
• desktop disappearing
• lost of ctl-alt-del functionality
• completely PC or system shutdown
• Windows defender warning: Win32/Fotomoto
• “can’t delete this virus” warning from various products
• the inability to save or print

you can’t display files from emails

So, now that you’ve been following my plight you want to know how to remove Fotomoto virus or trojan? I can tell you what won’t work (according to the best forums and what I tried), and Spyware Search and Destroy, Windows Defender, Avast, Panda, McAfee, Norton, SuperAntiSpyware, Hijack This, ALL DON’T WORK!

I was at my wit’s end. I’ve been building and repairing PC’s for over 10 years now, and I’ve removed some of the worse viruses, trojans, and malicious software from PC’s at least a dozen times (for other people) in the last 6 months. All the “Known” methods online were coming up empty (the usual list of progs I tried – listed earlier), and most of the forum postings about Fotomoto didn’t look too good. Then I read one from Yahoo! Answers where the guy said he was like me (long time PC builder and geek) and he tried all (the same) software with no luck. He offered advice that I hadn’t heard before – he said to try a product by Webroot called “Spyware Sweeper”. He said it had a database four to five times the size of all the competitors combined, and it had a fix for Fotomoto, Vundo, virtumonde, Win32/Fotomoto, Trojan.fotomoto, and on and on. The only drawback – it costs money.

I have never paid for anti-spyware software before now. Never. But I’ve never had something like this that I just absolutely could not remove before. I purchased a license for SpywareSweeper (that was Vista compatible – the latest one, previous versions are not) – and rebooted. It scanned for 20 minutes or so, I logged on and the problem is completely gone now! Yay Webroot SpySweeper! I don’t often endorse purchasing software – especially when there are alternatives that are just as good that are free. But with all these assanine virii, trojans, and malicious adverts – you just can’t keep up with all this sh*! anymore. I’m sorry – I’m glad I bought this, and I’m glad I have it in my arsenal now. I’ve tried it on the other PC’s in my house, and it works great with Windows XP and Windows Vista. That’s how I removed Fotomoto. If you have a better way, or a question, please comment now!

Windows Vista is getting to be the strangest version of Windows I have ever used.  I’ve had my Toshiba Satellite laptop for about 11 months now, and as you know it came installed with Vista on it from the factory.  The weird thing is I can’t remember ever telling it to automatically download and install updates from Windows Update, and yet it has been faithfully for 11 months now. It has told me once or twice that I had two “optional” driver updates, but I never approved anything else.  Today out of the blue I saw a little bubble appear above the tray “updates available” so I clicked on it and 9 updates were displayed.  7 were moderate to critical, and 2 were optional drivers – one for the wireless and the other for ‘Intel Mobile processor’.  I told it to install all 9, and then it minized to the tray – and it said it would continue to download and install updates in the background and I could go about my work.  So I did.

Boy was that a mistake.  I had Firefox open and Thunderbird Email.  I was surfing the web, a few tabs open, and in one of the tabs I was watching a YouTube video.  Then it happenned.  First my screen went black, which I might add happens frequently on this laptop, but it always flickers and comes right back.  I read recently in another article that problem should be fixed when Vista Service Pack 1 is released in 2008 (among other bug fixes).  So, I’m waiting for the screen to come back, and waiting, and then it starts to come back, but in a small box 1/4 the size of my screen (but the full display).  Then it flickers again and goes to some 640×480 resolution with absolutely HUGE icons, and then back to normal.  All the time my youtube video is choppily playing somehow in the background.  So I start to watch it again, and then the screen and mouse locks, and then everything comes back, and this whole process happens again and again like 3-5 times.  Eventually the screen goes to some kind of crazy huge pixelated number display, kind of like the Matrix, and then it goes black.  I tried to turn it off, and it wouldn’t.  I kept watching the hard drive light, and it just kep flickering, so I let it go.

I went to make dinner, and came back 25 minutes later and it was still flickering with a black screen.  After I ate it still was, so I watched a show on tv, and then out of the blue it stopped and my power light was red (indicating standby).  So I pressed power, and it came alive again as if nothing had happenned.  It said “updates completed – would you like to reboot” so I did.  Everything has been fine since then.  But why, Microsoft – did Windows Vista cripple my laptop and made it completely unusable for 48 minutes and make my display black??  Why didn’t it tell me first to close my programs??  Why do I own a piece of modern hardware with supposedly the best version of Windows ever created – and have Vista treat me worse than Windows 95 ever did?!  I just don’t get it.

Has this ever happenned to you?  Comment now and let us all know what you’re experiences have been.  I do with this laptop had shipped with Windows XP.

Here’s an interesting article over at ExtremeTech about The Five Broken Promises of Windows Vista. Are you using Windows Vista? Do you feel it’s performed to your expectations based on what Microsoft promised before it came out? I sure don’t. And neither does Loyd Case. He believe that 5 key things MS promised are not even in Windows Vista at the moment: Font Compositing, Easier Networking, Faster Startup (booting), Improved Stability, and Longer time between Reboots. Read the article…….I also seem to remember Microsoft touting “RSS Everywhere” in Vista, and they had some meetings with Dave Winer (*pretty much the inventor of RSS) about it – but then I never saw ANYTHING more about it. In fact, other than the smidgen in IE7 – I really don’t see any operating level support anywhere for RSS at all. Then again, they scrapped their mini-MSSQL version file system as well I believe. You would think that in 5 years – they would have had plenty of time to get this all right. Thoughts? Please, comment now!

I’ve had this problem with my Toshiba Notebook (with Windows Vista) where sometimes the screen momentarily goes black. I didn’t know if this display problem was Windows Vista or my laptop. I thought it had something to do with the graphics driver, or something to do with power management or the battery. It turns out that this is a Windows Vista Bug fixed by this patch. The funny part is, that’s not the only thing this patch fixes – it also covers bugs like “if part of the screen goes black”, and “part of the screen may become transparent”, or “the toolbar may disappear”, or even “the toolbar may appear at the top of the screen instead of the bottom”. I’ve had this laptop about 10 months now give or take, and I’ve had every single one of those problems except for the toolbar at the top of the screen. I found this little gem over on ExtremeTech.

On that same note, if you’ve had graphics problems with Windows Vista, problems playing video games or HD DVD or BluRay discs – you should really check out these four Windows Vista updates.