Wednesday, January 07, 2009

I'm Not Real Happy Right Now

I went downstairs for like 20 minutes, came back upstairs to find my computer taken over. There were all kinds of error messages, 4 Internet Explorer windows open, and I never use IE. There was a popup from some so-called anti-virus or scanning software offering to scan my computer for free. Seriously - I wasn't even gone that long.

I did not even touch that stupid popup, closed everything down, and restarted my computer. And 4 windows of Internet Explorer started, too. Now I have my firewall blocking IE - so periodically a small Firefox window will open. It's blank. There's nothing there, but it makes itself the active window and interrupts whatever I'm doing.

I had a bunch of tabs open, so I have no clue where this came from, but it's not making me happy. I'm especially irritated that Norton didn't block it, and that I didn't even have to be here, click on anything, or install anything. Why don't these jerks who come up with things like this devote their energies to say, solving world hunger, developing a viable clean energy source, or solving the financial problems in the world?

6 comments:

  1. Before you worry about trying to fix it any other way, use your system restore to go back to a point before this happened. I happened to have a similar issue on my computer, and the system restore took care of it. It's a great feature, if rarely needed and used, that Microsoft put into Windows XP (and I'm assuming Vista too).

    Trust me, I know these things.

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  2. I had a similar thing happened -- picked up a bug/worm/trojan -- through a link from Facebook. I ran all the scans with my antivirus and Search and Destroy. I downloaded a program called Malwarebytes and it took care of it for me after the others didn't. You can download it at http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php if you want to. A restore point would've been good if I'd had one.

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  3. A restore point would have been nice, and if I had thought of it before I restarted the computer, it might have worked. However, there is no restore point available now.

    I am going to scan the computer tonight and see if it finds anything. If not, I will try the Malwarebytes thing. Jeffrey has been having the same kind of problem with his computer for a week or so. I'll have to have him try that.

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  4. I had a similar thing a little over a year ago. It was a Trojan by the name of Smitfraud something or other. I tried all kinds of things, finally had to go to the computer guy. It's not fun...wish those who come up with those programs would find something productive to do.

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  5. I'm sorry... but your post makes me happy I have dial-up :-0

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  6. I get these adware pop ups all the time. It drives me batty!

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