re: odbc.hta
Monday, March 22, 2004 at 7:36 am
Windows XP Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by Jordan Lund
(4 messages posted)
On Sunday, March 21, 2004 at 10:24 pm, Evan wrote:
>I have the same problem in Windows XP. I don't
>know anything about programming
though
>and I don't understand how you said to get rid
> of them. What does attrib mean?
Boy, you make me feel old! Back in the day before
computers had a mouse you had to type everything.
This was called "DOS" and the generic name for the
interface is a "command line". This still exists in
Windows XP (purely, I
think, because geeks like me
simply can't let go. :^)
Attrib is a command you type at the command
line. To get there in Windows
XP you go from the
Start button to all programs to accessories to
Command
Line.
Now the good news: The command line should
automatically dump you into the
winnt directory
which is exactly where you want to be to remove
those two
files. Use the attrib command as
above to remove any hidden or shared or read-
only
attributes and then use the erase command
to delete the files.
If for any reason you aren't comfortable doing this
you might want to contact
a computer users
group in your area for assistance. Any good local
(i.e.
NOT a national chain) computer store should
be able to point you in the right
direction.
>Also, the program that's running is called
>odbc.hta but when I looked in
the Windows
>folder, there was a file called ODBC and another
>called ODBCINST. Both
were labeled
>as "Configuration Settings." Neither had .hta
>after them. Should I delete
these files?
The general ODBC files should be left alone. ODBC
stands for "Open Data Base
Connectivity" and it's
a part of Windows. That's why this particular, I
don't
know what you want to call it, virus?
worm? spyware? whatever is so bad, it's
mimicking a legitimate Windows file-name.
>My computer tries to log on to the internet
>every once in a while for no
reason so
>I'm afraid it's some sort of spyware. I ran
>Adaware and it found a ton
of stuff but
>this is still there. Please help this computer
>illiterate fix this problem!
It's most definitely some kind of ad-ware or
spyware and running Ad Aware
is a very good
first step. You might follow up with Spybot Search
and Destroy
which works well too. But as you
noted, neither product picked this one up. That's
why I had to figure out a manual removal
method. Spybot also has an "Immunize"
option
to prevent further infections by this kind of
software.
If you still can't figure out the command line, post
a reply to this thread
(which notifies me in e-mail)
and I'll make a batch file for you to remove the
files.
- Written in response to:
- re: odbc.hta (Evan: Sunday, March 21, 2004 at 10:24 pm)
Responses to this message:
 | re: odbc.hta (jese llavona: Thursday, May 20, 2004 at 2:14 pm) |
 | re: odbc.hta (Jaakko: Monday, September 20, 2004 at 7:18 am) |
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All messages in this thread [show all]
 | odbc.hta (Albert: Tue, Mar 2, 2004, 8:26 am) |
 | | | | | | | re: odbc.hta (Jordan Lund: Mon, Mar 22, 2004, 7:36 am) |
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