Virus not a Virus?

When is a virus not a virus?

The answer is very simple and so can be the solution. A virus is not a virus when one overlooks the more simple steps (which are usually the least time consuming) involved in troubleshooting Internet connectivity anomalies before diving into the much more interesting and complex intricacies of operating system files, program mutations, obscure strains of viruses, spyware and malware.

When you are the one who is often helping others fix their problems, you usually have everything under control in your own computing world. You are insulted when someone asks if you’ve remembered to check the power cable or if you’ve applied patches, etc. when troubleshooting issues. But every once in a while even the most basic, fundamental steps are missed by experienced users. I have just been humbled by this myself.

Executive summary:

Reboot everything you can before going on to more destructive methods and time consuming tasks. This takes little time, can be done by even the most novice user and can prove effective in many situations.

Here are the details in my scenario:

Dell desktop running Windows XP Home Edition connected via Ethernet cable to router.

Dell desktop running Windows XP Professional Edition connected via wireless to router.

One day, while working on the XP Pro system, I tried to log into Yahoo! Mail, but got a page timed out message in my browser (Firefox 2.x). I switched to use Internet Explorer 7 instead to access mail and it worked. Some time later, I tried to log into Google services (I use documents, iGoogle, GMail, etc. which require a logon) and I received a timeout in my web browser. Logging into Google services also failed in Internet Explorer on this same machine. I believed that I was looking at a virus or spyware of some sort by this time.

Meanwhile, I could access Yahoo! Mail and Google services with both other computers on the network. Furthermore, all three systems were surfing the net regularly besides what is described above. It seemed like only select websites related to security and services were being blocked. All other websites were coming up fine. I started Google searching for anything which may have been written on this. There was little to be hopeful about.

A couple days later, the notebook computer began to exhibit the exact same symptoms as the XP Pro system. However, the XP Home system still was unaffected. I realized that I had installed Skype onto both XP Pro and the notebook, but not on the XP Home system. I was on to something - or so I thought.

After much time-consuming downloading, updating and scanning of XP Pro and notebook with anti-virus and anti-spyware online scanners (see links under Internet Safety), moving hundreds of GBs of personal documents, photos and music to portable drives, recovering systems from recovery partitions and again from CD/DVD media, I was still having the same problem!

It was clear I was missing something. Alas, I looked to the router. It seemed impossible that it could be the problem since one of the three systems was unaffected and was surfing the net unimpeded. But still, I decided to log into the router’s administration web page and look around. All seemed normal. I checked to see if the manufacturer had released new firmware. Nope. I rebooted the router and magic took place. All systems returned to normal.

I couldn’t believe it after all the hours/days that I spent searching for the virus. Turns out there wasn’t a virus at all. It was one of those gremlins that lives in our computing environments which is immune to anything but the almighty reboot. So, the lesson is that logic does not always prevail. Sometimes it’s best just to reboot!