Expert: Carolyn Meinel - 3/2/2009

Question
OK heres my problem...my children. I have no idea what my 12 year old son did to my computer but many of the website I try to go to it is giving me "The page cannot be displayed" I know the page can be displayed because I can be on the phone with somebody who is. This has been going on for like two weeks. It seems to only give me that error on secured site like the governments websites and the edischarge site which allows me to log in & review my patients information while at any location. HELP please I should be working from home today but I can access anything I need!!!

Answer
I'm so sorry I didn't check my email yesterday afternoon so I could help you work at home.

It sounds like your children accidentally infected your computer with adware, which forces your computer to take you to places that try to sell you stuff. Lots of these adware programs are poorly programmed by crooks, so they often cause "page not found" messages.

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 your current antivirus. This is absolutely essential because otherwise it and F-Secure or Kapersky will fight each other and might crash your computer. It isn't good enough to just turn off your old antivirus because it probably has been crippled by your virus infection.

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.

If this works, you can either keep your new Internet Security product or uninstall it and reinstall your old antivirus from either a download of the latest version from their website (if that's how they sell it) or from the disk it was on when you bought it. Be sure to get all the latest updates right away. Usually antivirus companies are pretty good about updating their programs whenever some new attack becomes able to evade or cripple their product.

If you weren't running an antivirus program that includes antispyware protection and a firewall, then I recommend that you not reinstall your old program. Nowadays we need total protection, and this includes antispyware and a firewall.

7) To prevent future infections, don't use Internet Explorer, as it is susceptible to introducing viruses, adware and spyware into your computer. Instead you could use Firefox, free from Mozilla.org . Instead of using Outlook for email, you could use Thunderbird, free from Mozilla.org, or Eudora, free from Eudora.com .