Error message: "The Windows Security Center is Turned Off"

Hello,

I'm a new poster here and I discovered the forum while searching for a solution to a problem that I am having with my Windows Security Center being turned off.

This is the last symptom of a problem that I noticed about a week ago. At that time my Google searches in Firefox were being hijacked to other sites on a pretty consistent, but not 100% basis. Google searches in other browsers, IE9 and Chrome still worked. Also my System Restore functions had been monkeyed with so they looked like that was not working (wouldn't open) but I could tell that it was actually working and the error message was spurious.

I was able to restore the Google search functionality in Firefox AND get system restore back by installing and running SUPERAntiSpyware. That program found several bits of malware and apparently fixed most/some of them. (Yes, I purchased a copy immediate--out of gratitude, if nothing else!). I also own a copy of Anti-MalwareBytes and ran that, but it found nothing.

I thought I was good to go, but today I noticed the little flag icon in the system tray was red X'd and I discovered the error message about the Security Center is turned off. I tried going to the service center and turn it on, but same error. I tried opening the list of services and there is none for Windows Security....so I'm assuming some malware has either removed or disabled the files in there.

As I mentioned I came here via Google search and read a long thread about a similar problem, but I didn't want to try all the solution mentioned there (especially one that described how to make and run a "Fush.bat" file that seemed to handle the other guy's problem), until I had posted here. I'm not very up on troubleshooting malware, but I'm a fairly savvy computer user. I run MSE as my anti-virus, I have Anti Malwarebytes running in real time and now I also have SuperAntiSpyware.

I'd really like to avoid have to reformat, and rebuild this computer--lots and lots of software, etc. And no, I don't have a good image program. I do have quite a few System Restore Points available, and have considered going back a week or two and see if that helps. There are probably some updates and things I'd have to run after that, but again I thought I would check here before proceeding. One problem with picking an old system restore point is that I can't say for sure when the problem started with the Google search hijacks.....

If and when I get this working properly again, I promise to be a good boy and get a good system image backup scheme working. I've got EASEUS' program and it looks pretty good--it will make an image that can be restored to dissimilar hardware, which sounds like a good feature to have.

Any help offered here will definitely be appreciated. TIA.

Stephen Porter
ABQ, NM

Not a waste of time! Your post may help someone else