"Paul" <
nospam@needed.com> wrote in message
news:i04am7$tdu$
1@speranza.aioe.org...
> Sue wrote:
>> i recently started getting a mesage on boot up that exojitifef.dll could
>> not be loaded and I have no connection to the internet. are these two
>> facts associated?
>> how do I solve the dll problem? I can't access the internet from that
>> computer. I am using another computer to send this.
>> TIA
>
> When malware installs an executable, there are two components.
>
> 1) Typically, a randomly named file is used. When you can't find
> the "exojitifef.dll" in a web search, that is how you tell it
> is probably malware. If you could actually find the file and
> upload it to virustotal.com , you could have it scanned. If your
> browser cannot go to virustotal.com , then you know you're infected
> anyway. (Good malware designs, prevent your browser from visiting
> anti-malware sites.)
>
> 2) For the file to be executed, something has to launch it. Windows
> has various ways to "Startup" a file when the computer boots. If
> you go to sysinternals.com and get a copy of the "Autoruns"
> utility, that utility can show you all sorts of things that
> are set up to automatically run on your computer. By unticking
> the box next to the "exojitifef.dll" item, in the list of
> startup items, you can stop the error message from appearing.
> As long as the malware truly is deactivated, it should not
> reappear in the list.
>
> When your AV or anti-malware program runs, it will scan for items
> like (1) above. If it finds such a file, it will either "quarantine"
> it (put it in a separate folder, for later analysis by the user). Or
> it will delete the file.
>
> But what it won't do, is take care of (2). The part of the infection
> described in (2) is left intact. That causes an error message at
> startup (because the exojitifef.dll is deleted), but there might be
> no other damage, other than the nuisance of having error messages
> on your screen.
>
> You say you haven't been connected to the Internet. It is still possible,
> for someone to plug their USB Flash stick into your computer, and
> execute a file from that stick, and infect the computer. So there
> are infection vectors other than your web browser to worry about.
> A good AV tool, will scan a flash stick when it is plugged in.
>
> There have even been USB storage devices, shipped from the manufacturer,
> with a virus or malware on them.
>
> A number of the malware fighting tools, require a connection to the
> Internet, so that updated virus definitions can be downloaded. It may not
> be easy to do further cleanup work on the machine, conveniently, if you
> still don't have an Internet connection. While the "exojitifef.dll"
> file has been deleted, there could be others present on the
> computer.
>
> HTH,
> Paul