IT Queries: Computer problems answered

Hi Paul,
Unfortunately you had run out of time on the excellent radio program last night when I called. Wondering if you have any idea what has suddenly happened to my pc, XP o/s, HP9002.
1. All of my Inbox in Outlook Express disappeared. The 400 emails had been sent to the Deleted folder. This always happens when I first go in to Outlook
2. The Delete keyboard key no longer works.
3. When I click on the task bar Start menu a pop-up asks me if I want to send the Start Menu to the Recycle bin. This only seems to happen intermittently.

Hope you can help.

This certainly is very suspicious behaviour and the first step would be to follow our Removing a Trojan instructions. Before doing that, make sure all your data has been backed up.

Both free versions of AVG and Avast! are good programs and you should use whichever one you find easiest to install.

If no malware is found, it might be best to have a technician look at the system and your security settings.

When I am on the internet, there will be times that my computer completely goes off and back to the screen where you click your name to log in. This happens at random times and with no specific website. I have run a virus program. No virus issues. This started about a month ago and is progressively getting worse. I am working on a Compaq Presario pc in windows xp home edition. Never had this problem in the past.

If this is only happening while you are on the net then malware is the most likely culprit regardless of what your virus program says so you should follow our Removing a Trojan instructions to make sure you don’t have an infection.

Should you be clear of any infection, it’s likely your computer is overheating and causing it to reboot. You may need to call a technician to clean out dust out of the system and check all the internal fans are working.

I downloaded what i thought was a trojan blocker the name of the program is cyber security and now its reporting a number of virus now i can’t access some pages. I have tried add/remove and system restore and its still on my pc. What can i do?

Unfortunately you’ve been conned into downloading some malware. These sort of scams are unfortunately more common than they should be.

The best remover for this is Malware Bytes and we go through the process of fixing this problem in our Removing a Trojan page.

Be warned though that these Trojans often block the spyware remover sites so you may have to download the programs to another computer, transfer them to a USB stick and install them that way.

If it all sounds too complex, and it often is, then you should call your local computer tech.

I have Norton 360 V.3 on my PC running on Windows XP.

For the last month the Norton 360 Live Updates have not been working. I’ve contacted the Norton people and had them manually updated but this hasn’t fixed the problem as the automatic update still doesn’t work.  They uninstalled and reinstalled the programme twice but this made no difference.

They’ve now told me that I have a ctfmon.exe virus which will have to be fixed by Microsoft.  How can I have a virus when I have Norton 360 running all the time and how do I have it fixed?

First the ctfmon.exe file may not be a virus. This is a normal Microsoft Office file, so you shouldn’t assume you have an infection.

The first thing is to check you don’t have a virus and you should do this by following the instructions in our removing a Trojan page.

Once you’re happy you’ve cleared any possible virus infection, you’ll need to clean up your computer.

The next step is to update your Windows Scripting Host as Norton 360 relies on this to work properly.

With your computer now cleaned and up to date, download the latest Norton 360 update and install this.

After rebooting, check Norton 360 is updating. If not, follow the Troubleshooting Live Update instructions on the Symantec website.

Recenty my computer is behaving very oddly.. i am gettieng lot of error messages while browsing on inetrnet.
the most important and annoying message that i am getting is– “ Svchost.exe error” and asks me to debug after which the whole system hangs up.

Plz tel me why i am getting this kind of error message and plz help me in fixing this problem.

Comp specification- compaq presario d290mt., 512mbram,winxp,2.66ghz,p4. I am using ca antivirus on my system.

SVCHOST errors are a fairly generic warning. They really could mean anything as we’ve explained in a previous post. 

In your case this sounds like a serious malware  infection and it really would be a good idea to check your system for viruses or Trojan horses.

Both it appears Google searches are being hijacked whether  using Internet Explorer or Mozilla.  This  has started in the last 2 weeks. We have AVG   free  installed and  current. Can you  suggest some free downloads to fix the  problem? Tks

First, be careful you didn’t fall victim to the recent Google mistake. If Google’s your homepage any site you went to it from there may have been caught with the malware warning.

If it appears you have been hijacked, then we have a comprehensive run down on fixing these problems on our Removing a Trojan page. If you follow those instructions it should clear the problem.

I recently had Antivirus360 on my computer somehow. I had it removed, but everytime I try to access a website it says it is blocked and I get this message on a blank page: https error. I have nothing in my restricted/ blocked zone. I have no idea how to fix this. I appreciate any help

Antivirus 360 is one of these irritating rip off programs that worms its way onto a computer then nags you to buy it so you can remove, usually false, malware infections.

The really frustrating part with these programs is you almost certainly have an underlying malware infection that has come in with this program.

The problem sounds like the thing hasn’t been fully removed so it would be best to follow our instructions in our Removing a Trojan post.

One common way these programs get on your system is through Internet Explorer bugs. We’d also suggest using an alternative browser to reduce your chances of accidentally downloading the thing.

Hi, My pc has the following:

Norton Internet Security 2008
Spyware Doctor 6.0.0.386
ThreatFire 4.0.0.8
SpywareBlaster 4.1
MalwareBytes’ Anti-Malware

My question is: is KIS 2009 compatible with ThreatFire 4.0.0.8 as I want to continue with ThreatFire as it is a very good program?

I intend to keep Spyware Doctor.

It sounds like you are very much on the ball when it comes to protecting your system against malware and certainly your choices of sofware make sense.

However I’m concerned your system’s going to struggle with both Kaspersky and Threatfire on your system. Generally it’s not a good idea to be running two scanners at the same time.

While I’m not familiar with Threatfire, it’s likely it will cause problems with Kasperski or any other anti virus simply because Threatfire will identify the anti virus program as acting suspiciously.

It’s good practice not to have more than one malware scanner running at once and I think it would be best to leave one or the other’s automatic protection off and manually run a scan every few days or weeks.

Malwarebytes and Spyware Blaster are good programs as well and it won’t hurt to reguarly run a manual scan using those programs as well.

If you are really concerned about malware then it may be better to be a Limited User for your day-to-day computing. This will stop most nasties getting on to your machine.

Stan is getting a message that he is infected with a virus and should run Winspyware protect to fix it. This is a scam and is really just a virus itself but it can be difficult to remove. The best tool for removing it is a free download called Malware Bytes. The linked website has a paid version and a free download.

We’d recommend running this tool followed by cleaning up your computer.

After downloading the Adobe Media Player via the new ABC IView website, my anti-virus software – ZoneLabs Security Suite (ZoneAlarm Anti Virus) – found the following Spyware on my computer and has identified it as a serious threat to my PC’s security:

Win32.Trojan.SpyAgent.dbk
File: C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM32\\msflxgrd.ocx
RegistryKey: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Adobe

I’m pretty confident that’s a false positive from Zone Alarm, msflxgrd.ocx is a legitimate Windows file.

A quick search picks up some other people reporting this in the Zone Alarm forums in the last couple of days so I’d say it’s an Zone Alarm update gone wrong. My best advice would be to choose the option to permanently ignore this problem, ZA will probably issue an update fixing this problem in the next few days.