It seems to be a common problem, but I have yet another iteration of the “Blocked malicious URL” problem. It comes in spurts, like it’ll be several hours of nothing and then a flurry of blocked connections every minute or two. Also I’m seeing weird redirects when I try to use the internet (firefox, by the way) – I often have to try two or three times to get to certain sites (seems most common when aiming for antivirus stuff) with unexpected detours to celebrity news, advertisements, or ask.com, and the connection in general seems really slow to me. Once the transfer actually starts there’s no problem, but it takes forever to establish a connection for almost every http request, most of the time.
I’m using Vista home premium, protected with Avast! Free, version 6.0.1.289, currently with the 111004-1 definitions.
I’ve run several full system scans (including a boot scan) with Avast as well as other tools like MalwareBytes, Kaspersky, and SpyBot.
The blocks are usually malicious URL blocks, but I occasionally get an HTML file in the Explorer 5 cache directory (which is odd because I don’t have explorer 5, as far as I know), which get dumped into my Avast virus chest. I generally delete them, but if you want a few I can make a note not to do that for a while.
I’ve also experienced a few bluescreen reboots for no good reason, but I think that symptom seems to have passed. It hasn’t happened in a while.
I’m a computer professional, but security and viruses aren’t my forte, and this is my parents’ computer so I have no idea what they do with it when I’m not around.
Soooo, can anyone help me with this and help me figure out what’s causing so much havoc?