Hi, I’m new here obviously, and I came because I’m sick of the little ‘quirks’ my computer has now.
Over a period of about a year and a half my computer has had too many viruses to count and some of them have done some -seemingly- irreparable damage to it. Most of these issues aren’t much of a problem as they don’t effect my daily usage, but as I’m joining the Army soon I’d like to repair as much of it as I can before I leave that way I can connect to other networks without fear of corrupting them. It should be said that I frequently visit ‘questionable’ sites and download from many different sources and methods, including the use of Torrents. I’m intelligent and a quick learner but I have little to no experience fixing these types of problems. As long as it’s explained in an easy to follow method I should be able to get… well, any information you guys need to help me out. I know a few things about my computer, mostly through random experimentation, and I’ve been looking around the internet for the past half hour for information on my most recent issue but answers and results vary.
I used to run the free trial AVG, which I’m not sure if it came with the laptop or I went and got it myself. After a while AVG started freaking out at a certain site that a programmer friend I knew owned, so I shut it off and forgot to turn it back on. The friend’s site wasn’t a problem, but after the other sites I went to my laptop started getting a wide variety of viruses that I mostly didn’t notice or flat out ignored. When a virus finally hijacked my desktop I got pissed and noticed that AVG was still off. I ran scans and didn’t find much so I asked my mom (she’s a webmaster for a construction safety business) and she told me to use Avast. Well, Avast got rid of all my problems -or so I thought at the time- so I was happy. Eventually I found out I still couldn’t get to my Task Manager, and my account on the computer has Admin rights, nor could I access it through the Administrator account or even in safe mode. I dismissed it, figuring it a done damage and my own fault for not taking care of the computer better.
Recently I began getting a virus alert in Google, as well as other search engines. This originated from what Avast says is a JSDownloader-DO [Trj] and happens with varying searches and search engines. Before that though I started having my clicks hijacked and send through various ‘click fraud manager’ sites. Only direct link clicks were affected though, leaving me still able to access my target site by copying the link destination and pasting it in my address bar, even if was a Google redirection link. When the Avast alert appears, I am given with only the option to abort the connection, and the threat location is a link within Google itself (always the Google search URL). Some sites I’ve seen say this is a minor threat, while others have said it’s merely a false positive, and most of the conversations aren’t that recent either.
I’ve run multiple scans with Avast since my clicks started getting redirected, using not only the normal scan, but also boot scans and scanning during safe mode (that one actually took somewhere around 12hrs to complete) but it never finds anything. Occasionally certain pieces of my data come up as unable to be scanned, and while I don’t remember the exact reason it didn’t seem to be a threat and it was stuff I’m pretty sure is clean anyway.
As it is, I know I’m running Avast simply as I downloaded it from the site and with high sensitivity -with the sites I visit regularly I figured high was best- and the icon says 6 out of 7 providers are running. I think the one that isn’t running is the Outlook/Exchange one. Though Avast has had problems updating multiple times, that’s because often my internet connection fluctuates and sometimes fails before Avast can finish updating. Normally the problem is fixed shortly afterward though and Avast updates without problems after some inventive maneuvering in an attempt to get a better signal. The primary issue with my wireless internet connection is that I live within a short distance from a Navy communication base, and often their signals disrupt every wireless signal in the entire neighborhood, even wireless home phones suffer occasionally.
Well, that’s pretty much all I have to say for now. Now that I think about it though, I often become overly formal and intellectual with requests and similar messages to people I don’t know. I guess it’s just habit or something.
So yeah, thanks in advance for your time and any help you can give me, thanks for reading this lengthy post, and umm… yeah.
Looking forward to your response (why does that line sound so unbelievably lame? but then again, just about every ‘closing’ line sounds lame to me).
Dorian