Know anything about the sasserworm virus?

[shance]

My computer continues to shut down inexplicably and its been going on for about a week now.

Have I been *sasserwormed*?

[Kellanved]

1. probably

It might be Blaster or one of the variants. Anyway: this Microsoft page has everything you need to remove it:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/sasser.mspx

[Q3JR4]

3. ...

It may help to bring your computer up in "safe mode"....(on a windows machine you typically hit F8 as it boots up until it asks you what you want to do).

Then go to http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/FxSasser.exe and download the sasser worm removal tool.

Run it and if it finds anything it will tell you.

After you get your system clean, reboot it then go to http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/ to download security updates to plug the holes exploited by the sasser worm.

Then I'd recommend you download a virus scanner and keep that up to date. If you don't want to pay anything for it, I'd recommend AVG,
http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/lng/us/tpl/v5. You'll have to download and install it, and then run the update wizard so your system is completely protected.

Once all of that is accomplished, make sure you virus scan your system. Most unprotected (or outdated systems) have many worms, viri, and trojan horses.

[katym]

2. most likely

If you live near a college, call and see if they'll clean your hard drive for you. Most will, bc they have to do it all the time for infected computers on their own network. If not, try just getting it cleaned by best buy, etc. It's really difficult to try and get rid of the worm, bc it usually does not allow the user to run or update the definitions on their anti-virus. If its not a virus, then the only other thing I can think of is your computers fan, esp. if it's a laptop. An overheated computer will shut itself down with no warning.