new_mak.exe Virus

The other day my friend called me late at night because he wanted me to help trouble shoot his laptop computer. He said he could not use the laptop’s speakers because they kept on ringing, "brrrrrng brrrrrrng"! After calming him down, I went on to explain what was causing the ringing sound.

There is a virus called new_mak.exe that once it infects your computer it will turn everything upside down! You will no longer be able to double click your Hard disk drives. Every attempt will always be met with a Windows OS prompt: “Open with”. It will also cause a ringing sound to be heard – like in my friend’s case.

There are various ways you can use to remove the new-mak.exe virus. By pressing the ALT + CTRL+DELETE, you will be able to view the task manager and from there click on the name (new_mak.exe) and click on “end process”. That will do away with new_mak.exe virus and hence the ringing sound (brrrrrrng! brrrrrnd!) until the next time you reboot your computer.

Another way is by using the windows “Microsoft System Configuration Utility (msconfig)” command. Msconfig command was designed to help you troubleshoot problems with your computer, MSCONFIG can also be used to ensure that your computer boots faster and crashes less.

In this case we shall use the MSCONFIG command to turn off new_mak.exe virus so that it doesn’t load on start up. In windows xp go to Start > Run then type MSCONFIG in the open box and press ok. This will then launch Microsoft's System Configuration Utility (or MSCONFIG). Click on the Startup tab (the tab at the far right).

This takes you to a page with a list of "startup items." Startup items are programs that are automatically loaded every time you turn on your computer. You should be able to see new_mak.exe. Uncheck it and then Click on Apply then OK. A message will pop up telling you that you must restart your computer before these changes will take effect. Click on "Yes" and your computer will automatically reboot.

At the next reboot the new_mak.exe virus will not be loaded and you will also not hear the ringing sound.

To be on the safer side I would advise everyone not to double click on their removable devices, e.g the flash disks. Sometimes, and this is usually most of the time, the flash drives are usually infected.

And some of these anti viruses used nowadays may not even detect these scripts/viruses. When you double click the viruses/scripts like new_mak.exe, willpolos.vbs, my baby.vbs, etc get passed on to your computer from your removable disk. Other viruses that are notorious and infect your computer as a result of double clicking an infected Flash drive are SCVVHOST.exe, smss.exe.

You can try scanning your drives with Nod32, Mcafee 8.5i.