About a week ago I had a virus, and after getting rid of it my internet connection wouldn't work, so I was directed to do a winsock fix. After my connection got fixed I made sure all my settings were the same as before it stopped. Bearshare was working fine before. I tried to start up bearshare yesterday and it wouldn't work. I updated my nodes list and cache from the links on here. (I've had to do that before). Still nothing. I tried today and my connection indicator is yellow instead of green. I got a popup saying that "MS IFC Firewall" was enabled.

"Listener is firewalled, and BearShare detects MS ICF firewall software running."

However I have never had this before and I'm not sure what it is. All of my settings are the same. Can anyone help? I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the latest windows update or something I'm missing. Never had any problem like this until recently.

Using Windows XP - Service pack 2
Bearshare Lite - 5.2.5

PixieCorpse

First, I have no experience with Bearshare but a little with a similar virus and your problem is a reminder of something that happened to me a couple of years ago.

The virus that I got did not change any visible settings but it did change certain key elements in my windows registry.

So if this has happened to your PC you will find that even though you may not have missed anything your PC certainly will not behave the way it did in the past.

The first thing you have to do is to find out what has been done, I found that only MicroSoft's Malicious Software Removal Tool managed to find the problem by properly identifying the name of the virus. Then I googled the name to see which part of the registry has been attacked and the changes the virus made.

This now left me with a number of options:

a) Manually change the registry (and hope not to make things worse).

b) Reformat the HD, reinstall everything and start again.

c) Clean install of windows on a new HD, reinstall the apps and copy data from the old HD to the new (this is labour intensive but no files were lost).

d) Go back to a previous "restore point", this may work if the virus has truly been eradicated.

With my problem, and for various reasons, I chose option "c", I would suggest that you try "d" first.


UK Bob