AboutCarolyn Meinel Expertise I cover Windows, Unix, TCP/IP and Ethernet security questions. I do not cover Mac, Palm Pilot, or other networking issues.
Experience Books by Carolyn Meinel: wrote a chapter for The Hacking of America book (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567204600/happyhacker)
My article Code Red for the Web for Scientific American was reprinted in the book Best American Science Writing 2002 (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060936509/happyhacker). My book The Happy Hacker: A Guide to Mostly Harmless Hacking is now in 4th edition with a Japanese edition (see http://happyhacker.org/hhbook/).
Question Hello Carolyn, and thank you for offering your expertise.
My computer (equipped with XP) was recently infected with a rogue Anti Virus program called, Register Defender Platinum. It wreaked havoc on me by sending pop ups, and slowing the PC to a crawl.After doing much research I found a website called, www.411-spyware.com/registry-defender which advised me to delete the Registry Defender Files, and removed the Registry Defender registry keys. I couldn't find any Registry Defender dll files. Everything works great, and back to normal, but when I try to enable my Mc Afee anti virus supplied by Comcast, it shuts down Internet Explorer. Anytime I try to access a McAfee site, it shuts down IE. I researched and found that this could be attributed to Ad ware or Spyware attaching. The importnat thing is there is no virus protection on the PC.
I greatly appreciate your guidance!!
Vince
Answer I'm assuming you've tried System Restore and it failed. If not, try that, it just might work. If it doesn't, here's what will almost certainly work.
1) Download either Kapersky Internet Security, which offers a free 30 day trial at http://kapersky.com, or F-Secure's Complete Internet security suite, which offers a free thirty day trial: https://store.f-secure.com/cgi-bin/dlreg/ml=EN?ID=FSISTB&desid=TRIAL
2) Disconnect from the Internet.
3) Uninstall McAfee. Chances are good that it has been damaged by Register Defender, so if you decide to try to use it again, you will need to reinstall it from scratch.
4) Install your Internet Security product. Download any updates available.
5) Run a complete scan of your computer. Follow any instructions it might give you.
6) Reboot.
7) Try another complete scan and reboot. Now test to see if you can access the McAfee site.
8) If this succeeded, and if you want to use McAfee instead of the antivirus program that, you'll need to uninstall the antivirus program that fixed your computer first, as it and McAfee will conflict.
9) If neither of these free trials were able to fix your computer, please contact me and I'll tell you how to "nuke" your computer, restoring it to its factory settings.
