Yesterday I bought a brand new laptop with a fresh windows install. After turning it on I immediately updated windows and upgraded to Windows 10.
Following that, I installed Avast (free), MBAM, Malwarebytes Anti-Exploit, Chrome + uBlock Origin + HTTPS Everywhere extensions and Steam. The only websites I browsed were those associated with the above software.
Shortly after opening Steam and starting download of a game, I started receiving constant popups from Avast indicating URL:MAL or URL:MAL2 affecting svchost, iexplore and chrome. Following this, start menu stopped functioning and could not be opened with the mouse or with the windows key. Next my internet browsers (ie, chrome, edge) all refused to open. Task Manager opened very slowly and was mostly blanked out, showing only itself in running processes and the other tabs had all disappeared. I restarted the PC and start menu/browsers became functional again however the popups continued. I did a full system scan with Avast, MBAM, TDSS killer and nothing was found.
Since it was a new PC I decided it would be easiest to just wipe and start over. I used the PC reset function in Windows 10 to do a fresh install with “remove everything” selected. Once this was done I booted back in, installed Avast and Steam. Shortly after installing Steam I again started getting the same popups, followed by start menu/browsers not working. Again restart fixed that problem, however popups continued and after a time my laptop’s touchpad disabled itself and couldn’t be re-enabled using the function keys (I had to browse into the driver settings with the keyboard and enable it).
After an hour or so, the popups stopped and have not restarted. Very grateful if somebody could have a look at the attached scan logs.
Run FRST and press Fix
On completion a log will be generated please post that
THEN
Please download AdwCleaner by Xplode onto your desktop.
[*]Close all open programs and internet browsers.
[*]Double click on AdwCleaner.exe to run the tool.
[*]Click on Scan.
[*]After the scan is complete click on “Clean”
[*]Confirm each time with Ok.
[*]Your computer will be rebooted automatically. A text file will open after the restart.
[*]Please post the content of that logfile with your next answer.
[*]You can find the logfile at C:\AdwCleaner[S0].txt as well.
Hey guys sorry to butt in, but I was going to make this exact same post (even done to the software inc steam). The only thing I had not tried was awd and that finally fixed it for me so hope it works for you too. By the by, I normally use Firefox but today opened Chrome for the first time to get at my google drive and literally the second I started a download the warning from avast came up.
