Limewire has been working fine for me without a problem for some months now, but over the last few days the program has been sharing an enormous amount of files from my computer i.e. in excess of 2000 files. I don't know where these files are coming from. There appears to be a folder C:\Uploads but it is not visible from the base C:\ directory.
Upon booting my computer this morning, I was given a notice that I only had 256MB left on my C: drive. WTF is going on?
I managed to delete all the files in the folders, which were mostly warez related, but I can't seem to get rid of the "invisible" directory.
Please help, guys. My computer's physically crippled with all this resource hogging.

Thanks for the reply, I used another online scanner, Kaspersky I think. It came up with 4 viruses in 11 infected files. A few little notes that I discovered in the process:
1) During startup Ctrl-Alt-Delete AND Ctrl-shift-Esc were both disabled during startup, unless I hit it STRAIGHT away or after final loading,
2) XZ.exe was using a lot of CPU, which was visible on the C:\ base directory,
3) Along with xz.exe there was also temp.zip (which was the same file size as the unwanted uploads, b.tmp and z.tmp. All four of these disappeared after startup,
4) C:\Windows\System32 folder attributes were set to hidden, as well as C:\Uploads, therefore I couldn't view them, even with "show all hidden and system files"
5) Hidden in the System32 folder were the following nasties: cmd.com, netstat.com, ping.com, p2pnetworking.exe, regedit.com, taskkill.com, tasklist.com, tracert.com - all had hidden attribute.
6) Just before rectifying the situation MediaAccess.exe and MediaAcck.exe appeared in Processes in Task Manager, which I couldn't even end - it simply kept re-opening.
7) Start/Run regedit, command, and cmd wouldn't open. The only way I got around it was by typing cmd.exe and regedt32. This was a result of the files stated in 5).

I pity anyone else that get's hit with the same problem. Many hours have been lost as a result of it.

True. I have been regularly scanning, since I'm new to broadband cable and p2p, plus I'm still working out minor details with routing. The thing that annoyed me the most was that Norton couldn't pick it up. The only suspicious program it detected was MediaAccess, nut that was only a minor problem. I've even got the latest virus definitions with Norton, but hey, whatcha gonna do? Even after all this I still rate Norton as quite a good AV program.

Thanks for the great info Lanky. I was having the same problem. I could get rid of the uploads folder but it would always come back. I've gotten rid of everything now and will run my scans again and see what happens.

Dear Lanky

Seems that you got hit pretty hard by assorted viruses and other nasties.

Can you tell me, do you have a firewall? If not then it is time to get one.

Also, whenever you use LW you should also use PeerGuardian, it stops various companies crawling into your PC, via port 6346, and leaving keyloggers and other stuff behind.



UK Bob

I use Norton Internet Security 2005 and Norton Antivirus 2005 which has a built in firewall. Every time a new script gets used it asks me to accept always, block always, block once etc. I don't remeber accepting p2pnetworking.exe to run and especially not MediaAccess. Even after updating my virus definitions Norton wouldn't detect p2p with a full system scan.

Dear Lanky

I too use NIS2005 and I have found that the firewall (NPF2005) part is pretty difficult to get to grips with, compared to the one I used before, i.e. NPF2003.

When browsing my favourite websites, internet banking or shopping I find that I have to temporarily disable the firewall before I can get onto the site, I did not have to do this with NPF2003. And I believe the “block and allow” settings do not always work consistently, they seem to be dependant on Symantec’s update policy of the day.

Suffice to say, if you are experiencing the same sort of problems I am it is quite possible that you could have temporarily turned of your firewall and got hit when it was down .

However, saying all that, it is also possible that one of your “settings” wasn’t set high enough for NPF2005 to block this script that caught you. From checking my system last night, I recall that my NIS2005 is set to block all scripts, all Java scripts and all Active X from running so I don’t get your pop-up questions. But I do get other pop-ups which are driving me “nuts”, trying to find solutions for them is also making me go bald .

Using NIS2005 is much harder than it should be and, I believe, because of this it is easier to leave NPF2005 off than on (or turn down the security settings until they virtually have no effect), so making your PC vulnerable to attack.




UK Bob

PS. Don’t forget, you should also use PeerGuardian when using LW, it protects your PC from nasties crawling into your system via port 6346.

UK Bob,

Firstly, where do I get Peer Guardian from? Also, is there anything important I need to know about it in regard to setting it up, running etc? Is it a trial version, or any ads associated with it?

Thanks,
Duke

Dear Lanky

You can get PeerGuardian 2 from here:

http://www.methlabs.org


Also, you can connect to the block lists online and/or download and add them to the software. PG2 depends on the lists to defend your PC (I use both the online and installed block lists), you get them from here:

http://www.blocklist.org


As for issues, there are none, the software is free and there are no ads or spyware associated with this product.

I would suggest that you download and read the manual, which will give you a "feel" for this app before you use it.

I can say that there are others in this forum that are using PG2 based on my recommendation, no one yet has said anything bad about this application, which sits behind your firewall and protects port 6346.




UK Bob

Thanks UK Bob.

Bitstream-surfie,
All seems fine on my computer, but I am still to reinstall LimeWire. I just haven't had time with exams at the moment. You can see of how this was starting to worry me.
With MediaAccess.exe and MediaAcck.exe I wasn't able to kill either of them through task manager. Every time I did they immediately reopened themselves.
I just remembered that I used a program called Startup Control Panel (CPL) that integrates with Windows Control Panel. It shows everything that appears in HKLM/Run, HKCU/Run, Services and Startup. Within I found p2pnetworking.exe but it too kept reappearing everytime I booted the PC.
If CPL might work for you grab it at Mike Lin's Home Page
It probably would've been a good idea to state that I too am running XP Pro somewhere before lol.