Viruses While Playing Game

Donna, you might not be aware of this, but discussing or advocating ad blocking software is prohibited by Forum Rules.

Maybe that's where private messaging comes in. The information Donna has provided has been great. I'm not a computer jock and only know enough to get me in trouble. In my case, listening to the advice of others, I let a few things go because I didn't think they were important. I run virus scans and do other things on a regular basis and none of them were detecting anything wrong. I don't know if I'm completely done, but my machine is definitely running better.
I know that maybe certain advice may be frowned on, but, I use several programs on a regular basis and don't know how they interact. As a for instance, When I use Spybot, I hit the update key and it does its thing. I then hit "Immunize" and it does its thing, except, once in a while, it tells me that as many as 1/2 of the files are not immunized. I have to tell it to immunize those files when I know full well they were all immunized the last time I had used the program. How do they get "un-immunized"? Is another program making changes?
I use:
Security Essentials
Spywearblaster
MalwareBytes
Spybot Search and Destroy

Are they all necessary? Are there conflicts between them or any of the commonly used programs we all use?
I no longer use Yahoo as my home page. It has gotten so full of advertising that I hated looking at it all and I think it affects the time for things to load. It has gotten so bad that my mail page now has advertising on 1/4 of the width. Does all of that advertising affect some of the problems I see?

Mellon Head said:

Donna, you might not be aware of this, but discussing or advocating ad blocking software is prohibited by Forum Rules.

Oh my gosh! No. I was not aware of that.

My apologies for breaking forum rules. I will take the time to read the full list of rules and regulations.

@ kodakjack,

I use MS Security Essentials, Spyware Blaster and Malwarebytes Antimalware myself, though I have to admit that I have never been a big fan of Spybot Search and Destroy for use by the typical home user. Most people don't understand how to use Spybot's TeaTimer. That feature can cause more problems than it's worth, in my opinion. TeaTimer monitors changes to certain critical keys in the Windows Registry but does not indicate if the change is normal or a modification made by a malware infection. The user must have an understanding of the registry and how TeaTimer works in order to make informed decisions to allow or deny the detected changes. I have the same opinion of registry cleaners as there have been reports of them clearing out needed registry entries and messing up PCs. In addition, what they do clean up is so small that little or no advantages are noticed.

As for our dilemma here about getting the fix to run properly, give me a moment to prepare another trick I have up my sleeve that should be fail proof.

I see that Firefox is your browser of choice. If you would, please double check to make sure the default download location in Firefox is set to the Desktop. To do that follow the instructions below:



Click on Tools then Options in the drop down menu.

In the downloads section, click on the dial button to the left of Save files to: to highlight the button.

Next, click the Browse... button, then on the Desktop folder and the click the Select Folder button at the bottom right of the window.

Click the X on the open tab to close the Options window.

I'll be back shortly with my next set of instructions.

My pleasure to help in any way I can, kodakjack.

Did you double check to make sure the default location for downloads in Firefox was to your Desktop?

Here's what I would like for you to do....

Go ahead and right click on the FRST64 icon found on your desktop and choose Delete. See icon below:



Now, let's download a fresh copy of Farbar Recovery Scan Tool from >>here<<. It should save to your desktop automatically since your browser has been configured to do so.

To make this easy for you, I am going to have you download an attachment, which should download straight to your desktop and all you will have to do is right click on the FRST64 icon and chose Run as administrator to open the users interface of the program. When you click on the Fix button, FRST will find the attached text file on your desktop and execute the fix for you. The resultant fixlog.txt will (should) be found on your desktop after the computer has rebooted.

Please note: I have included a command in the script that will reboot the computer for you. If it doesn't reboot on it's own (which it should) please reboot the computer yourself.

Ok. Enough gibber, gabber. Here are the instructions...

• Download the attached fixlist.txt found below to your Desktop.
  NOTICE: This script was written specifically for this user, for use on that particular machine. Running this on another machine may cause damage to your operating system
• Right click on the FRST64 icon and choose Run as administrator to open the program.
• Press the Fix button (as shown below) just once and wait.
  
• The tool will make a log (Fixlog.txt) which you should find on your desktop after the computer reboots.
• Please post it to your reply.

Excellent! :)

I see there was a total of 1.3 GB's of temp files removed. That's quite a bit.

How's the computer behaving now?

Go ahead and right click on the FRST64 icon and choose Delete to uninstall the tool. No need for it anymore.

Then follow the path below to right click on and delete the FRST folder:

Start orb > Computer > C:\FRST

Flash Player keeps crashing. It worked earlier - before I fixed things.

Hm? Nothing in the fix would have caused that. It shows as up to date in the Installed Programs list.

Were you ever able to find the Flash icon on the Control Panel window? If so, click to open it and under the update tab click on Check now. Just because it shows up to date in the list doesn't necessarily mean there wasn't a security patch released.

Let me know any results..