J
john
I am not terribly computer-literate, so please bear with me!
A few days ago something started to go pear-shaped with my computer
(NEC, running Windows XP). I was getting all kinds of annoying pop-ups
and messages (like about a dozen a minute!), some for casinos and the
like, but most of them telling me my computer was infected with
viruses and trying to direct me to various sites to solve the problem.
My browser (IE7) was also being hijacked.
I already have McAfee, and I ran it and removed the infected files it
identified (including Trojan). The annoying pop-ups continued to
appear and my browser was still hijacked. I removed IE7 from my
system, which cut down on the number of pop-ups, and did a bit of
searching for help using Firefox. I found some useful advice, which
mainly involved downloading and running the following:
HijackThis
AVG Anti-Spyware
SmitfraudFix
After that, the pop-ups stopped and my system ran normally for a
couple of days.
Now, though, I'm finding that Firefox will not give me access to a lot
of Internet pages , including my webmail programme, and Thunderbird is
similarly out of action. I get "connection timed out" messages most of
the time; just occasionally I'm lucky and manage to make a connection.
Switching to Outlook Express and Netscape Navigator doesn't help.
Other programmes (Microsoft Word, etc.) seem to be running normally,
but anything connected with e-mail or the Internet seems to be on the
blink.
It's in the nature of the problem that I may not always be able to
read or reply to postings, but any help or advice would be much
appreciated.
Thanks,
John
A few days ago something started to go pear-shaped with my computer
(NEC, running Windows XP). I was getting all kinds of annoying pop-ups
and messages (like about a dozen a minute!), some for casinos and the
like, but most of them telling me my computer was infected with
viruses and trying to direct me to various sites to solve the problem.
My browser (IE7) was also being hijacked.
I already have McAfee, and I ran it and removed the infected files it
identified (including Trojan). The annoying pop-ups continued to
appear and my browser was still hijacked. I removed IE7 from my
system, which cut down on the number of pop-ups, and did a bit of
searching for help using Firefox. I found some useful advice, which
mainly involved downloading and running the following:
HijackThis
AVG Anti-Spyware
SmitfraudFix
After that, the pop-ups stopped and my system ran normally for a
couple of days.
Now, though, I'm finding that Firefox will not give me access to a lot
of Internet pages , including my webmail programme, and Thunderbird is
similarly out of action. I get "connection timed out" messages most of
the time; just occasionally I'm lucky and manage to make a connection.
Switching to Outlook Express and Netscape Navigator doesn't help.
Other programmes (Microsoft Word, etc.) seem to be running normally,
but anything connected with e-mail or the Internet seems to be on the
blink.
It's in the nature of the problem that I may not always be able to
read or reply to postings, but any help or advice would be much
appreciated.
Thanks,
John