Do I have a worm or virus in my system? What to do about it?

[sonotatechie]

3 contacts have forwarded me emails that have my name as the sender, although not my email address. The contact of the email is a link. In the emails forwarded to me I can also see a list from my contact list -i.e. that this mail from not my address was sent to various contacts and will appear as though it is from me.
Is this a worm or a virus?
Is this something I can take care of myself?
I am on Windows 7. Currently booted in safe mode with networking as precautionary measure. I was using AVAST and would like to change to Kaspersky Internet Security as after this I would like increased security. Would Kaspersky sort out the worm or virus or does it need other skill?
There were difficulties reported on this forum in the past about removing AVAST and installing Kaspersky - is this still problematic?
I use different email clients - I have 2 work email addresses, a yahoo address and a gmail account. I use outlook on my laptop and sometimes access email through Firefox browser. I also access email from my Android Samsung S4 mini. On the Android the mail is accessed through gmail app (the work addresses feed in here) or yahoo app.
There have not been reports of such emails since 17 August when 2 different versions were reported.
Much appreciated
Lynda

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Hello sonotatechie (Lynda) sorry you have had such a long wait but it happens sometimes and I do my best to plough through some of the older posts.

Now just so I have got this right you have emails that say that they are returning your message and that the address that is quoted is not your address??
The links did you open them at all?? if you did then it was a bad move and yes there is something very fishy with those emails.
Plus what account is this stuff coming through on?? the work machines the home machine or all three??

Before we go any further I want you to try this Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10 read the info and make a bootable disk (on another machine if you have to) and then set the BIOS to boot from the optical drive and let it run. This in actual fact runs /scans your entire machine without involving Windows and takes only a few minutes.

Now when that is done I want you to run these too while Windows is in normal boot up (don't forget to reset the boot order in the BIOS to the hard drive)

https://www.malwarebytes.org/mwb-download/index.html

http://www.superantispyware.com/

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

ADW download from bleepingcomputer delete any rubbish found with the malware scans

NB If anyone is runningKaspersky security it may rant about ADW - just ignore it or disable it for awhile

For the Kaspersky I can vouch that it is very good and have been using it for the last five years on several machines. It is quite easy to set up and if you need help in settings I can give you a few pointers. It is also usually very cheap to run mine cost me approx $0.035 a day to run (3PC 2 year licence) look around for deals

But before you install Kaspersky you will need to remove the Avast and there is a removal tool you must use for that https://avast-removal-tool.com/

In the meantime start at the top of my reply and let me / us know how you get on.