No, I don’t use a download manager.

I don’t get a specific error message during the download, but the download process itself is very slow. In addition to being slow, the download stutters when it’s almost complete. So basically, when it gets to 99% complete, it stops for a second or two, then suddenly completes.

The real problem starts when I try to run the file I just downloaded.

Using the MBAM install file as an example, I get a pop-up message telling me there’s something wrong with the file. I’ve added screencaps of the messages I get below.

I’ve tried downloading with IE, Firefox and Chrome, and the same thing happens every time. I’ve even tried redirecting the download from IE to BitComet, but when the file gets to 99.9% complete in BitComet, it reverts back to 0% complete and starts again.

There’s something else too: the settings for my browsers (excluding Firefox) have been changed. For Chrome I set the “Continue where I left off” option on start-up, but it’s been changed to open to “about:blank” on start-up. Likewise, IE’s homepage was changed to about:blank when the default was bing.com. I promise I didn’t touch these settings on either of these browsers!

I got an alert from IE saying a program wanted to change the starting homepage from about:blank to google.com, but I declined it. Before that, I got an alert from YAC (Yet Another Cleaner) saying a program DID change the homepage to about:blank. I didn’t get a screencap coz it was so quick.

And I definitely know general browsing has become much slower. Pages either take forever to load, or fail to load, and my WiFi connection drops out sometimes too when my phone remains connected to the same WiFi network.

Ugh, this laptop’s only a few months old! T_T