# adobe acrobat speed launcher ???



## sidecar (Nov 17, 2006)

had a BIG problem and this is what i think caused it, any ideas?


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## pip22 (Aug 22, 2004)

Well that's not much info to go on! Just what exactly was the big problem you had? Adobe SpeedLauncher is genuine Adobe file intended to speed up the time it takes to open the Adobe Reader. It hasn't caused me any trouble.
It can be disabled if you prefer.


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## sidecar (Nov 17, 2006)

something rendered my os (xp pro) unbootable, upon trying to boot, got an error saying file "hal.dll" was missing or corrupt. put that hdd as slave to another hdd with win2k and found several thousand files with "owned xitch" where the "x" was acctually a "b", as the "type of file" was able to move all my files that i didn't want to loose.
i found the file named "adobe acrobat speed launcher" and when i clicked on it, it rendered my hdd with the win2k unbootable, then i ran xp to try to repair the xp os, i did get it to become bootable, but not in very good condition. i then formatted it, and reinstalled xp. have yet to check on the health of the hdd with win2k. any ideas? thanks in advance


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## 8210GUY (Aug 29, 2006)

I rarely see a case where I think someone was "hacked", but I suspect this may of been what happened to you, the adobe software would not cause such issues on it's own IMO, it simply speeds up how quickly adobe reader launches.

Have you had any confrontations or anything recently online ? accepted any files etc ?
Because the most common form of "hacking" is simply a case of getting someone to accept a file that contains a Trojan or similar which gives them a back-door into your PC, I am wondering if something got in and attached itself to the speed launcher or something, personally I would check the drive for faults, but I doubt there will be any, then use the same utility to format the drive in full writing zero's to the whole drive to hopefully remove any nasties then reinstall, then scan the 2k drive by right clicking on it and scan it with everything you can, eg anti virus etc, also download the latest Stinger from McAfee and run that, you could also check with the online scans from Trend, Panda, Kaspersky and the like, see if anything is found, do not go into the drive, it could reinfect the fresh install if it is infected.
Also do you use a firewall etc ? any other protection ? you certainly need it these days.


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## sidecar (Nov 17, 2006)

i use zone alarm pro and the free av from at&t that is available to dsl. subscribers, also spybot s&d, and lava soft. well, ur probably right about the back door thing, as i have used p2p, (shareaza). is there a way to protect a pc from such things? (other than not using the p2p). think i already know the answer. as for the win2k hdd, if there is nuthing on there that i really need, should i just reformat, or is there some other things i should do? any help is appreciated, thanks.


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## 8210GUY (Aug 29, 2006)

If it were me I would want to find out what happened as best I could so I knew what went on to avoid it in the future, scanning the drive to check for nasties seems the best way to do that, as with downloads get in the habit of scanning the file(s) BEFORE opening them, but the only way to never get infected is to unplug the PC, because you can pick stuff up just surfing these days.
I don't know what A\V your isp has given you, but I found CA to be useless which was the one m$ gave out the other year, but consider swapping to something like Avast, it is free and good, ZA should be fine, just be aware of what you let in and out, and only allow permanent access to trusted programs, and NEVER grant server rights for any software as they shouldn't need it to run, the only exception I have found in the past is during file transfers with msn, but not sure if that still stands with these newer versions, and always make your email ask permission to go out, that was the only thing that warned me I had a problem a few years back by it's constant request to go out when I had not asked it to.
The following is a list of online scans to double check your current protection, because no one piece can catch everything.
http://www.windowsecurity.com/trojanscan/trojanscan.asp
http://www.kaspersky.co.uk/virusscanner
http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp
http://www.pandasoftware.com/products/activescan.htm
http://spywareinfo.com/xscan.php
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/
http://www.windowsecurity.com/trojanscan/
http://safety.live.com/site/en-US/default.htm

Also check if your secure by going to the following and run their scans.
https://www.grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2


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## sidecar (Nov 17, 2006)

can i run these scans with hdd in question installed as a slave with reasonablly no chance of infecting the primary drive?


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