Vista giving error messages & won't dowload updates

I'm running Microsoft Vista on my Dell Inspiron 1501 laptop. It has started odd behavior:

• It won't download MCafee updates or Microsoft updates: it gives this error message - Though the site seems valid, the browser was unable to establish a connection. It happens in both IE and Firefox, but the same sites work fine at the same time on my desktop.
• Error message: "COM Surrogate has stopped working. A problem caused the program to stop working correctly Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available. [Close Program]" When I click on Close Program, it says "COM Surrogate has stopped working. Data Execution Prevention has closed COM Surrogate." This happens every time I try to use Windows Media Player for my AVI files, and sometimes with Windows Explorer and other programs.
• Smaller issue:I also noticed that the screensaver never comes on anymore.

I tried restoring to an earlier point, but still have the problems.

I think this was caused when I tried download a search and replace program from a freeware site; McAfee warned about a trojan and stopped the download and I ran a sweep of my disk after it with McAfee and Windows Defender. Both returned clean but it's the only thing I can think of.

Any ideas? Thanks!

Erin

 

You seem to have a wide variety of problems, which may indicate a system problem.

A good place to start is to run a chkdsk. What you do is start/restart your computer. While the computer is starting, press F8 repeatedly until you get a menu. Select "repair your computer".

After that, you should eventually come to a menu where you can open a command prompt. After opening the command prompt, type in "chkdsk c: /r" without the quotes and press enter. Make a note of any errors generated and if the chkdsk reports bad sectors.

 

On the second point, do you have Divx or Nero installed and are they the latest version? If they are, then try removing them temporarily to test.

I'd love to say I came up with this all on my own, but I grabbed it from HowToGeek

 

Thank you for the help!

I ran chkdsk and had no errors or bad sectors.

On the menu with "repair your computer" was Dell Factory Image Restorer (Restore your system software to factory condition). So if worse comes to worse, I can do this after doing a newer backup of my and my husband's files.

 

Sorry, I meant to put this in with the first reply.

I don't have Divx or Nero installed.

Thanks again!

 

Any codec packs?

 

I would guess there's codec packs, but don't know where to check for them.