Posted: 4/23/2006 9:10:19 PM EDT
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Hoping someone can help me out. Having problems since Fri night. Slow, mail won't come through. Acted like I had some spyware, I thought. Ran Ad-Aware. Picked up about 50 and dumped them. Also downloaded Spy subtract, Windows Defender and ran okay but intermittently would act up again. Run Ad-Aware and would always pick up a couple but the problems are persisting moreso and failing to resolve. Tried to restore to earlier date to no avail. Internet explorer is what I am running. Current issues: Mail +/- Cannot get onto anything typing in to address bar. Just won't load. I can use my favorites, etc but typing is a no go. Everything is getting very slow and it is becoming a royal PITA. The idjuts at the two computer service places here never really help with anything. HELP!  |
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Is windows defender an anti-virus? Here's what I run at the same time: AVG antivirus BHO Demon SPybot search & destroy I'd try downloading those, getting the latest definitions, and going from there. Haven't had a need for adaware with those three. Oh, and stop using IE if you can and switch to opera or firefox. That will make your life a lot easier. |
Man that is all greek to me.  Except the last part and I have discussed that one to no avail. My wife says she needs it(IE) for work. We've had this computer for a couple of years and no problems until now. We had Norton Internet Security but downgraded to Norton Antivirus a couple of months ago. Wonder if that is related somehow. |
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I hate to tell this to you but your computer is currently infested with an alien virus that is gestating. The only way to be sure is to nuke it from orbit. hijack this Posting a screencapture of its results (or copy-pasting the log) will let others go over the processes you have running to determine if you've got a bunch of crap that shouldn't be on there. Edit: Spelling |
That's probably going to take more computer knowledge than drjarhead indicated he has. I'd reformat and reinstall, then start fresh with a good set of AV / Spyware programs. Switch to firefox / opera for all web surfing. Keep IE only for wife's work, and disable ActiveX for any site except work. |
| Hate to say it, the best thing to do when something like that happens is to format and start over. When I get a computer seriously infected with spyware and/or viruses it can be very difficult to get it up and running exactly like it was before. Something gets corrupted and slows something down (or makes it not work at all). Had a friend recently drop off a comp when I got all the crap off his computer it still would be quite slow in sending mail for some reason. (even with reinstalling the mail program). |
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www.trendmicro.com www.ccleaner.com/ along with adware, spybot, microsoft update |
Which should I downlaod? |
Any of the download links under "download from" should work on that website. They've also got a spyware removal tutorial in the link I posted. It's comprehensive to say the least. The guys advising you to reformat and reinstall are taking the "nuke" option and what I, personally, do at least once a year even if I'm not having performance problems  .If the tutorial is out of your league technically then you may just want to try Spybot Search & Destroy, it'll get things that Ad-Aware misses. The first download link is the one you want for that page (the Spybot Search & Destroy 1.4 link). |
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Does the PC run fine for everything else? It only slows down when you run IE? If so, it is very likely IE has been hijacked. The program named HijackThis looks at everything your PC is running and is set to run every time it boots up. Download it, let it scan, and copy paste the results here so we can see what processes are running. |
Working on it. Going to take a while for sure. I am not real up on this stuff but I'll sure give it a shot. That majorgeeks site looks pretty good. |
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As a computer professional professional enough to own a glock four-tay, I suggest: Windows Defender Free AVG for Windows (Direct Link) The default settings are perfect for a noob (or people in the medical profession, who in my experience are technology Luddites).
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That's what you get for looking at midget porn. "Here, download this program to access our entire library of deviant pornography" gets 'em every time... Microsoft's Antispyware Utilities are good (I believe it's called Windows Defender now) http://www.microsoft.com/msdownload and you can always try to run Housecall http://housecall.trendmicro.com . Both are free. Housecall used to be better, but I've found it works best with the Java kernel rather than "Browser plug-in" mode. Make sure before doing anything else to open up IE and under "Tools" you'll see "Manage Addons" if you're IE6 or better. Disable everything, there's nothing in there that you really need anyway. Also check the file C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts . This is the hardcoded hosts file for Windows name resolution. It's a fairly common hijack method for spyware to overwrite the hosts file with a list of bogus name resolutions; for example they'll try to put in a bogus IP pointing "www.google.com" to their server instead of Google. The only thing that should be in that file for most people is an entry that looks like: 127.0.0.1 localhost Good luck, stay current on patches, and for God's sake don't open untrusted email attachments or downloads from websites. |
That would be me.  Most of my problem though is my age. We didn't have one computer in my HS and not all too many in my university.  I have the defender and have downloaded Noadware and Ccleaner. Working on Spybotsd. I have dial up. No DSL out here by me. Not for a long time. Maybe I'll go satellite soon. This is getting old. |
It sounds like you have everything you need to get back on track. BTW, we didn't have computers at my high school either. The Apple II came out in my sophomore year, but we couldn't get one at the high school. The elementary schools in the next city over had a boatload of them thanks to state aid programs to teach illegal alien school kids computer skills.  |