Backup Biz Laptop: Something's Shutting down Antimalware Programs

Here are the symptoms in order:
1. I started having to wait forever...and ever...and ever for web sites to come up that normally came up right away. No big, right? I just came back later, and they came up fine. The only weird thing was one of them was http://www.google.com. Not even iGoogle. Just plain old Google.

2. I started getting blank white web pages instead of the sites I typed in. This didn't happen with Google, but it happened with Live Journal a LOT. I asked my friends if it happened to them, and they said they got error messages that the site wouldn't load, but never blank pages. I got some error messages, too, but it was the blank white pages that concerned me. This only happened once or twice. Oh, I just now remembered that LiveJournal, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace were hijacked last month, but I don't know to what extent. ANYway....

3. I began to have trouble with WinPatrol not starting with Windows like it's supposed to. I had to start it manually, and even then it sometimes was reluctant. Sometimes it would take so long that I'd think it wasn't starting because it didn't show up in Task Manager, so I'd start it again, and all of the sudden there would be 2 icons in my taskbar. Grrrr.

4. That was when I began to have trouble with Avast not starting with Windows--well, not all of it. The tray icon didn't show up, so I had no way of knowing if it was working correctly. Parts of it showed up in Task Manager, but not all the parts that I normally saw. There were only 3 components instead of the usual 6 or so. I tried running it manually from the desktop and adjusting the settings once the memory scan was done, but that didn't bring the tray icon back. I usually had to restart my computer twice to get it to come back. I tried to repair the program, and it asked me if I wanted to uninstall Avast. It didn't say anything about repairing it. So, I cancelled out of that, went to my Add/Remove programs list and uninstalled the program properly, then went to the Alwil site and downloaded a brand-new copy with a new # or whatever. I don't think I've had a problem with that since...

5. ...until Online Armor had an update. Then it and Avast started telling me each other was malware. *sigh*

6. The last Firefox update made it run incredibly slow, but that was probably their fault, not my computer's.

7. The last Windows Defender Update, and this is the reason I decided to turn these in, failed to install, both by automatic update and from the site. I tried about 10 different times and nearly twisted myself into a pretzel to try to get it installed, and the damned thing wouldn't do it. It's installed all the updates since for some dumb reason, but it just won't take that Windows Defender Update.

Oh, and I watched the scans. First time I ever saw anything like that on ComboFix or MGTools. Hope that means we'll get somewhere with these issues.

Thanks for your help! I turned in a thread for my desktop computer, too, though, and that's the most important to get cleared. This is my backup, and I'm a lot less productive on this, and my company is being nasty about my production not being "up to par." They're obviously more concerned with quantity rather than quality because I'm only about 10 lines per hour below their requirements, and they keep telling me, "but your accuracy is excellent!" :banghead

Okay, you aren't here to listen to my troubles. Thanks again for your help! :wave

 

Last scan! Thanks again, hon.

 

I'll check and get back to you as soon as I do, but I didn't see any error messages. It did run all the way through to the "press any key" point. What's especially odd is I already did the preventative measures for those errors because I'd gotten them before. *scratches head*

Um...is there any way I could get someone to look at my desktop? That's much more important than this one. My company is actually threatening to fire me.
:eek

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=198351

Thanks,

 

Okay, I guess I didn't do that fix because I hadn't remembered getting that error. Oops. Do you want me to run MGT again?

 

I should have added, "...now that I have run the XPProFix?" to that question because I have. Sorry I didn't make myself more clear. A hazard of my disorder, I'm afraid.
:-o
Thanks again for your help.

 

I got a warning from Avast that something was trying to make a connection with an outside IP address. I don't remember whether the connection was in or out, but it seems like it was out. I closed it off, of course.

Other than that, everything seems to be behaving.

I'm attaching the log.