Help! I have Avast on my out-of-warranty Dell Inspiron 1525. About 36 hours ago my “wifi catcher” stopped working and Avast tells me my firewall has been turned off…can’t find a way to turn it back on. So, I can’t get on line and am unsure if its even safe to try without the firewall turned on. Worried I have a virus.
Are you using Avast Free? Did you try rebooting your pc? Did you try rebooting your router? Did you happen to disable your Wifi using the Dell radio switch?
On the Dell keyboard the WiFi switch is also the F2 key. Did you use the F@ key for something and accidentally turn off your WiFi instead ???
Thanks for the replys! I use the free version. I did reboot my computer and router. I just ran a diagnostic that tells me that my wireless adapter is disabled or uninstalled.
Avast tells me my firewall has been turned offare you sure it is avast that give that warning....as avast free does not have a firewall and to my knowledge avast does not warn if winfirewall is off
So press the F2 key without pressing the FN key to re-enable it. 
This is clearly not an Avast problem. I have a Dell XPS and it has touch keys. One is a radio antenna. That stands for Wifi. You should have a similar key as Bob has informed you.
http://www.dell.com/support/Manuals/us/en/19/Product/inspiron-1525
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080207123319AAag0ll
on my dell the button is located on the laptop left side
Avast is telling me my firewall is off. There is a message that my wifi catcher band configuration is not compatible with my WLAN card band configuration. F2 and the wifi catcher button on the side are unresponsive. When I try to do something, it says the dependency service or group failed to start. My concern is that a virus somehow turned off my firewall and created these other issues. Does that make sense at all?
Possibly … Do you have a USB to transfer programmes to and fro ?
Please download MiniToolBox, save it to your desktop and run it.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/73555776/minitoolbox.JPG
Checkmark the following checkboxes:
[]Flush DNS
[]Report IE Proxy Settings
[]Reset IE Proxy Settings
[]Report FF Proxy Settings
[]Reset FF Proxy Settings
[]List content of Hosts
[]List IP configuration
[]List Winsock Entries
[]List last 10 Event Viewer log
[]List Installed Programs
[]List Devices
[]List Users, Partitions and Memory size.
[*]List Minidump Files
Click Go and post the result (Result.txt). A copy of Result.txt will be saved in the same directory the tool is run.
Note: When using “Reset FF Proxy Settings” option Firefox should be closed.
THEN
Download OTL to your Desktop
Secondary link
[*]Double click on the icon to run it. Make sure all other windows are closed and to let it run uninterrupted.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/73555776/OTL_Main_Tutorial.gif
[*]Select All Users
[*]Under the Custom Scan box paste this in
netsvcs
BASESERVICES
%SYSTEMDRIVE%*.exe
/md5start
services.*
explorer.exe
winlogon.exe
Userinit.exe
svchost.exe
/md5stop
dir “%systemdrive%*” /S /A:L /C
CREATERESTOREPOINT
[*]Click the Run Scan button. Do not change any settings unless otherwise told to do so. The scan wont take long.
[*]When the scan completes, it will open two notepad windows. OTL.Txt and Extras.Txt. These are saved in the same location as OTL.
[*]Attach both logs
Hi essex and CJM,
I have a hunch something has intervened with the firefox settings, awful lot of that maltampering going on recently.
Wonder if that is also found to be the case here and if we see a swirl of the old farbar service scanner in the continuation of this malware cleansing thread?
But is all in the hands of the one that works miracles here and that is essexboy,
polonus
Comprueba si tienes algun proxy activado o si el adaptador de red no falla en otra pc
English in this forum please.
I will have access to another computer with USB tomorrow and will try the suggested approach. (using iPad currently). I will report my success or failure. Again, thank you all for your responses. Much appreciated!
Essexboy: I followed your instructions, and have attached both logs (I hope! If it didn’t work I will try again)
Essexboy: Here’s the other one.
I believe the problem may be McAfee, as that is renowned for messing with the networking
Download the McAfee removal tool from here http://download.mcafee.com/products/licensed/cust_support_patches/MCPR.exe
From control panel uninstall McAfee
After the reboot run the removal tool
Does the network now function ?
Essexboy: I uninstalled McAfee from the control panel. I tried 3 times to run the removal tool (restarting each time) but failed. It says “the process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process”. Each time I restart, it tells me that programs (such as Skype) have stopped working and I have to click to agree to stop each one. I think these are programs that are set to open on startup.
And the screen before that said" Incomplete uninstallation: Error obtaining full permissions for cleanup"
Could you try from safe mode ? If that fails run an OTL scan and I will remove it manually
Same result in safe mode.
Run just the OTL scan? In safe mode? …and then attach it?