VIRUS. ARGH.

So I was talking to a friend on AIM and we came around to discussing modding FF7 PC. He was surprised it was moddable (hello, PC game?), so I went to get FRAPS to record it. The trial was limited to 30 second videos, and I'm broke for a couple more days. So, I asked a buddy if I could borrow his version. Before someone goes off on ZOMG PIRACY BAN, I'll make it known that it is VERY rare (we're talking once every two blue moons here) that I do this, and when I do, I end up buying it later anyway.

So I start the installer, and all of a sudden this self-extracting RAR pops up and drops three viruses into the root of C:\. AVG tried to catch them, but it was too late; one of those fake anti-spyware programs popped up and my computer started defecating construction materials.

I spend about the whole day running scans to try and get rid of it, only to find that it somehow screwed with AVG, and AVG suddenly thought that every EXE file on my computer was a virus, or perhaps this thing somehow infected every file on my computer. Ugh. I'm left with an unbootable Windows, so I end up Ghosting C:\ to my external drive and reinstalling fresh.

It's been about 24 hours since that, and right now I'm on a fresh install. Working on extracting my various files from the Ghost image and getting back into it. I'm unsure if it actually was the installer I was given, I had been searching the internet earlier for it, perhaps a website snuck it onto my PC and just decided to execute right there? I trust the guy who gave it to me and he assures that it was clean.

Well, guess that's what I get for laughing at someone else who got owned by a virus last month.