Expert: Keith Davis - 9/12/2008

Question
QUESTION: Hi! I hope you can help me, because i've been trying to fix this problem for quite a while. My computer is fairly new; about 2 years old. Lately i've been having random problems with Internet Explorer. It's running much slower than usual, many pages (mostly tech help pages) will either not load at all, or load incompletely. Also, whenever i search on Google, it redirects me to a random site that starts out as a "http://go.google.com" address and then redirects to another random search site or the yellow pages. And on most webpages it will say page unable to load or it will load, but it will look weird and the things on the page will not be in their usual positions. I've run countless virus scans and none of them detect and kind of virus. I think it may be a kind of the virantix.b virus, but the usual processes associated with it are not showing up. Oh, and I have an XP.

ANSWER: Have you updated IE to IE7?
Have you did the MS updates?

What anti-virus software are you running?
I use AVG free anti-virus. You can get it at www.grisoft.com
I've been virus free for 7 years.

Answer the questions above and we will go from there. I'm thinking you don't have a virus, maybe a trojan, but not a virus. AVG will detect and remove both.
You may just need to update to the latest version of IE and do the updates. Sometimes webpages don't load correctly because of old browsers.

Get back with me and let me know if you still are having problems.

Keith


---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Ok... I have IE7
I don't know what MS updates are, but i'm working on it. lol
I have McAfee anti-virus... apparently it's not working.
Oh, and my computer won't allow me to go to the www.grisoft.com address.
Probably because it would help me... idk what to do now.

ANSWER: Open IE, go to tools> internet options> security> and make sure everything is set to medium to medium-low security. Sounds like your settings are set too strict.

You could also try and download Mozilla Firefox, which is a much more secure and better browser and see if you can access the sites with it.

Don't give up on me yet. Let me know what you find in the security settings.

Keith

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Ok, my security was on medium-high and i changed it to  medium. I still had the same results.
I forgot to add yesterday that my mom ran the McAfee scan and it found a trojan and something else and she deleted them. The computer is still acting weird.
Last night after I was on the computer for a while this countdown thing came up and said the computer had to restart because of NT AUTHORITY... i have no idea what that is.
And i'm afraid to download anything else because it may slow my computer down more... will download Mozilla Firefox do that?

Answer
Ok, now we are getting somewhere. You have some kind of trojan and McAfee did not remove it. I'm not that crazy about McAfee. I'm going to list the things below that I use for computer security. You should really think about getting rid of McAfee and downloading the programs I will list below. There is step by step instructions. They should help you with the trojan. Firefox is no longer your priority. Spybot S and D and AVG anti-virus are.

The following is what I do for computer security:

I use 3 different programs and have been virus, spyware, trojan, and hack-free for close to 6 years.
Believe it or not all of these programs are free and are rated higher than programs you pay for.

Anti-virus- AVG Free Edition www.grisoft.com

Firewall- ZoneAlarm www.filehippo.com/download_zonealarm_free/
Make sure you disable Windows Firewall (it is worthless anyway) because they don't work well together. Don't get aggravated with the program. At first it will really bug you because it will be popping up a lot. When it pops up read what is trying to access the internet. If it is a trusted program click the check box "remember this" and click allow. After a short while you will get it set where it only alerts you to things that should not be accessing the internet.

Anti-spyware- Spybot Search and Destroy- www.filehippo.com/download_spybot_search_destroy/
Download, install, update, then run a scan and remove all spyware that is found.
Setup the program like this: Go to "mode" (top left of page) and click "advanced". At the bottom left you will see "tools". Expand tools and click "hosts file", then click "add Spybot S and D hosts list"

A little more safe internet advice:
1. I don't use Internet Explorer. It is not as secure as other browsers. I use Mozilla Firefox. It is faster and very secure.
2. I don't use Outlook email. I use web based email like yahoo or hotmail. Outlook actually loads email on your PC. Web based email stays on a server and you just view it from you PC.
3. Only download free software from trusted sources. There are very few that I trust. Trusted: www.filehippo.com, www.majorgeeks.com, www.snapfiles.com

I hope this helps you out. Let me know if I can help you further.

Keith