Quote from Bolimomo:
No I absolute do not agree with you.
Please don't come to these stupid "clear" conclusions on your own about me.
Well Bolimomo, I do apologize if I'm totally mistaken about your computer expertise, so I thought I owe it to you to explain my reasoning:
Quote from Bolimomo:
I have strong evidences which suggested that the Irfanview software is associated with a virus:
"Win 7 Internet Security 2011"
One can already see from this first post of yours on the topic that you don't have any solid evidence(s) (sic!) that Irfan View would be infected. "Win 7 Internet Security 2011" is a rogue anti-spyware software, but if you Google ["Win 7 Internet Security 2011" Irfan], you won't find anything.
Solid evidence would be a link to Bugtraq or some other reputable publication that revealed how Irfan View also installs a trojan. Or, an MD5 (you surely know what that is!) of the infected executable, and the download link so we could reproduce the problem.
Moreover, Irfan View is extremely popular, with over 1 million downloads every month. I happened to e-mail with the author (yes, I am actually a current computer programmer, not one who learned FORTRAN or BASIC 20 years ago) and even if he slipped a virus with the latest version, 1 million downloads a month means that someone else before you would've caught it and Irfan Skiljan would have pulled down the infected upload immediately.
That's an extremely long Google link with a lot of cruft. It shows that you used Google Suggest from
www.google.com. Most computer-savvy users don't waste time going to google.com, but search from the search bar in their browser (Ctrl+K in Firefox). They also remove crap from links and paste only the necessary portion:
http://www.google.com/search?q=win+7+internet+security
Quote from Bolimomo:
Either that, or the download website I went through to get Irfanview had placed trojan horses.
Which download site was it?
Quote from Bolimomo:
Every since I started using Irfan my Windows 7 became weird.
That's a typical statement that my computer semi-literate girlfriend makes: "My computer is being weird".
Come on, Bolimomo. A programmer would point to some more specific symptoms. "i_view32.exe has high CPU utilization"; "Comodo pops up with attempts from i_view32.exe to connect to [IP]".
You haven't even mentioned the name of Irfan View's executable. Be honest, have you even bothered to locate it on "your Windows 7"?
Quote from Bolimomo:
I didn't jot down the URL from which I downloaded the install file. But I know one thing.
"jot down the URL" - LMAO. Yup, just what folks would do back in the 70's. Your browser has a download history. Ctrl+J shows it in Firefox and Opera. Was it hard to copy/paste the URL? Or posting it here or e-mail it to yourself before wiping your Win 7?
Quote from Bolimomo:
Or it was purely coincident that I had clicked on a wrong "DOWNLOAD" button. These days webpages are very confusing and it is just so easy to step on a landmine.
Haha. Another thing grandma would say "the wrong DOWNLOAD button... webpages are very confusing...".
There's nothing confusing about downloading Irfan View. You go to
http://www.irfanview.com/ and click Download. The first link is to CNET, a reputable site (which BTW does their own antivirus and anti-malware scanning before mirroring anything). You click on the CNET icon, then Download. That's it.
Quote from Bolimomo:
Let me ask you this: with my version of Irfanview, every time after I exited the software (I really don't want it to run any more), it kept popping up on my screen after a few hours (I am not sure exactly how long). It wouldn't die. It wouldn't go away. Is this normal?
Again, "popping up on my screen" is SO not how a programmer would express things, at all. You'll actually fire up a task monitor (Ctrl+Shift+Esc in Win 7, but I bet you knew that), and see if the process actually disappeared from the list when you closed Irfan's window. Then you'd run
Sysinternals Autoruns and see if somehow Irfan was listed among the autostart entries.
Quote from Bolimomo:
I have been a computer technical support since the mid 80's for over 20 years.
Well, tech support is known to be the lowest echelon of computer specialists.
But I agree with you that this debate is not productive for anyone but you, so let's cut it short.
Plus, you've already wiped your Win7 installation (a typical knee-jerk maneuver instead of running the latest ESET NOD32 or some other competent antivirus), so there's not much you can do now in terms of forensic analysis.
