A Noob in search if direction....

Hello to the all the major geeks. I would first like to say that I have lurked here for a while and found a lot of useful information. A while back, a buddy of mine got hit with Smitfraud and information here on various threads afforded us the ability to get his computer back to tip top shape. Many thanks to this site for being here to help with that endeavor.

Today, I have my own computer problems and I have to say that nothing I have read about really fits my situation ( like I really even know what my situation even is!). Many come close but in all honesty I have managed to confuse myself and have finally submitted to the idea that I cannot fix this myself. I am to the point that I do not want to do anything without direction from someone a whole lot smarter than me, that is why I decided to become a member. So I will describe my computer and my issues and see if someone can lead me forward.

I have a Dell Dimension DIM 4600 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz 2.70Ghz with 1.00 Gig RAM and 120 on the hard drive mostly free space. I am running Windows XP service pack 2. I keep up with windows updates and run McAfee Security Suite that included Firewall, Antivirus, spamkiller and privacy service ( until recently that is( . I have used Spybot Search and Destroy, spywareblaster, Windows Defender, Ccleaner and Adaware Se. I have a high speed cable modem and today my computer operates at almost dial up speed.

At the begining of August I got a slide in box from McAfee saying that I had to manually download an upgrade. During the download, I was instructed to uninstall my Adaware SE. I was not happy about that because I value that program. I did as I was told and the upgrade went thru OK.

I thought all was well and I was checking out the radically different Security center I now had on my computer. I ran the "maintain computer" scan only to find out after I did that default options for the scan removed all restore points and even the windows genuine advantage validation tool not to mention some useful active X controls. I crossed those bridges and thought everything was OK but from that point forward, I was working without a restore point prior to the upgrade. I was unaware of what was about to happen.

I was not happy about that or my performance in IE or outlook so I decided to lurk the Mcafee forums and I found that my performance and other issues were not uncommon ( ALOT OF PEOPLE FIRED UP). Many folks uninstalled the new upgrade and went back to the old stuff only to have more problems then they had before they did go back. So I decided to just deal with what my computer was doing and follow their forum postings to see how things were going to be worked out. Then things got really nasty for me.

I decided to burn a CD of one of my favorite playlists and when I went to do so I found that all of my music was gone. Almost a thousand songs...just gone. ( all songs burned from CD and none downloaded so at least I didn't lose them alltogether) Shortly after that my computer performance went down further than it had right after the McAfee upgrade. So I started hunting. I uninstalled my Dell Juke box musicmatch software ( I figured I would just use windows media player in the future) and ran all my scans. Nothing showed up.

I did some more reading and I ran the Ewido online scan and nothing there either.I then decided to run all my scans in safe mode. Spybot came up with a collwwwebsearch and I had spybot fix it. Another Spybot scan afterwords came up clean. I ran a CWS after that and it said I was good to go. I also get a hit in Ccleaner that is reoccuring after every restart, it is this { with a dot dead center to the right of that bracket and it is called an unused file extension. At one point I thought that was coming from KODAK but now I really don't know at all.

I thought I was home free but alas, that was not the case. I was surfing a bit and all of a sudden I got three popups, something that is quite out of the ordinary, and I noticed that one of popup windows had a header of about:blank with nothing on the page.

So I set out to read about that. My homepage is never hijacked but some times when I close I/E, the icon in the tray will switch from the page I am closing to about:blank before it actually closes. Once in a while a seperate tray icon will appear even though I have no I/E page opening and it is also called about:blank. When I try to click on it in the tray to maximize it or close it, it disappears as soon as I click anything.

I also get an 'ending program' box for a split second when I do a shut down or a restart, this only happens sometimes and it is so fast I cannot catch the name of it. I can say though, that is not always the same thing.

While researching the about:blank, I attempted to open some pages here at this site that come up in an internet search and it refuses to allow me to open the pages I request. At this point I can only think my computer is infected. In a nutshell, I think that the McAfee upgrade opened my system up to an attack of some form and the tools I have now are ineffective against whatever is wrong with my computer.

I do not have Adaware anymore and really don't know if I can download it again now or not. I am now in a situation where I do not know what I can or cannot download when it comes to any programs or tools. I reviewed and tried the 'read this first' stuff' and to be honest, I am so confused at this point that I feel I will damage my computer more than it already is if I go forward without some specific direction.

I set out to ask alot of questions in this post and it seems I all I have done is ramble. I did notice where too much information is never a bad thing so I guess I am really just trying to provide an overview of my situation so good folks here can get a feel for my issues before I go further. I surely have found my limit to computer care with this deal and I guess I only need to ask one question to get started.

Which way is up? ( this is me just trying to cheer myself up at a time when I am so frazzeld about my computer, no to mention my own inability to fix it, and had I not paid for it, I would be throwing it in the trash can!)

Any comments, questions or direction would be much appreciated, not to mention helpful towards my sanity LOL! I really don't want to be a Noob boob that just makes random and stupid posts all over the site so I hope what I have done here in this post was the right thing to do. Thanks.

Ashrak

 

Like TimW suggested run the malware thread and an expert will help you determine if your pc has any further spyware.
McAfee Security Suite can slow down your system, since it is running 4 programs that take up alot of memory. How about uninstalling it from your pc and using some of our free alternatives that work just as good or better than McAfee and use up less resources. But uninstall only after running the malware thread.

Avast- http://majorgeeks.com/Avast_Home_Edition_d1968.html
AVG- http://majorgeeks.com/AVG_Free_Edition_d886.html
ZoneAlarm- http://majorgeeks.com/ZoneAlarm_Free_d388.html

 

i too have had problems with mcafee security center.
for example:
the firewall re-enabling itself after i disabled it.
the mcafee updater not uninstalling on a full uninstall and hiding itself from msconfig.

after contacting mcafee support my problems were cured, basicly because i got them to tell me what registry keys to delete to completely uninstall thier program.

although thier support is great thier product, security center, sucks

 

I have done as you instructed and I tried to create a thread in the malware removal section to post the results ( actually, I tried to respond to this thread as well) but every time I hit the submit button (here or there) I am taken to a screen that tells me to log in. I am really confused, could you help me out?

 

Ok I did that but the same thing happens now. I created a thread and attached three logs. I was going to post a reply to that thread with an additional log and a link to this thread, but it didn't come up in the thread list and the page that came up told me I was not logged in. I checked in the forum and the thread I created was not there. Does it take a while to post on the board?

When I tried to recreate a post ( me thinking I screwed it up the first time) I went to attach the same three I did in the first creation and it tells me they are 'in process' and I could delete them by clicking a link. I am unable to delete them. Does this mean I simply need to hold my horses and wait a while for the thread to come up?

I have more than one administrator file, one plain and one tagged with my computers name..... is this proper or could this be part of my problem?