Your computer is most likely infected. To eliminate the various types of malware, you will probably need to scan your computer with a number of programs. Malwarebytes is a good start but it won't catch everything. You can do this yourself if you have technical savvy, otherwise I would suggest you pay someone to do it. You can take the computer to Geek Squad. They are at Best Buy stores. They will scan your computer for all types malware using several programs, apply the latest updates to operating system and perform some routine maintenance. I think they charge around $60.Can someone help me out here?
My computer seems to be full of spam and I don't know why. On this site, sometimes in posts, there are words that are underlined, and when I hover my mouse over the word, a window drops down and its a link to a site selling stuff.
Sometimes when I click the link to a thread here, another page opens up and it takes me to a spam site.
I have never have spam on this computer before - a few weeks ago I tried to download Microsoft Office 2010 or something, which I needed in order to view a file I had downloaded from my karate website. It seemed to have added other programs, and while I deleted it and the other programs, they still show up.
When I click on the Firefox button, two windows open up, instead of the one, and a window pops up in each one saying that an installation of something has finished, and I can't do anything until I click 'finish' and the window disappears, and only then can I visit this forum, or any other forum.
I know my computer obviously needs a clean out, but I have no idea how to do it - I want to keep all my passwords and bookmarked sites, including the sites I have in my drop down window at the top of the screen. How do I manage to get rid of this spam shit without getting rid of those?
If the above does not fix your problem then a system restore would be your best bet. Again you can do this yourself or have it done.
Neither of the above should cause you to lose any data, however it's always a good idea to backup any of your important files, because any time you start doing this kind stuff unexpected things can happen.
So, I managed to get into my Control Panel and check all the programs that were installed in the past four weeks, and I uninstalled all of them, including three different versions of Microsoft Office, which took care of the SearchGol program that was hijacking my browser.
It took me ages to remove some of them, I had to be patient, but they are gone.
I got Jess to take a look when she got home, and she installed AVG for me and ran a scan, which has just finished, and everything now looks okay.
Thanks for the advice guys, if I have anymore trouble, I will just look through this thread for the answer!
You've been awesome.
The Geek Squad at the Best Buy near me charged my daughter $60. They ran a hardware scan, their own program not the one on the computer. They ran 3 scans for viruses, adware, and other malware and delete 2 spyware programs and one virus. They updated the operating system, defrag the drive, deleted temp files. The computer ran fine when she got it back.Your computer is most likely infected. To eliminate the various types of malware, you will probably need to scan your computer with a number of programs. Malwarebytes is a good start but it won't catch everything. You can do this yourself if you have technical savvy, otherwise I would suggest you pay someone to do it. You can take the computer to Geek Squad. They are at Best Buy stores. They will scan your computer for all types malware using several programs, apply the latest updates to operating system and perform some routine maintenance. I think they charge around $60.Can someone help me out here?
My computer seems to be full of spam and I don't know why. On this site, sometimes in posts, there are words that are underlined, and when I hover my mouse over the word, a window drops down and its a link to a site selling stuff.
Sometimes when I click the link to a thread here, another page opens up and it takes me to a spam site.
I have never have spam on this computer before - a few weeks ago I tried to download Microsoft Office 2010 or something, which I needed in order to view a file I had downloaded from my karate website. It seemed to have added other programs, and while I deleted it and the other programs, they still show up.
When I click on the Firefox button, two windows open up, instead of the one, and a window pops up in each one saying that an installation of something has finished, and I can't do anything until I click 'finish' and the window disappears, and only then can I visit this forum, or any other forum.
I know my computer obviously needs a clean out, but I have no idea how to do it - I want to keep all my passwords and bookmarked sites, including the sites I have in my drop down window at the top of the screen. How do I manage to get rid of this spam shit without getting rid of those?
If the above does not fix your problem then a system restore would be your best bet. Again you can do this yourself or have it done.
Neither of the above should cause you to lose any data, however it's always a good idea to backup any of your important files, because any time you start doing this kind stuff unexpected things can happen.
Let's hope you can get this fixed up without going for outside help but just a word about Geek Squad -- I don't know if they're in Australia but I found them a waste of time. In my case they set a 15-minute appointment, god help you if you're not there on time, then they keep it for a week and tell you absolutely nothing. Then after a week I got the computer back in exactly the same condition it went in. I would definitely recommend a local small-business vendor rather than Geek. If you need that step.
So, I managed to get into my Control Panel and check all the programs that were installed in the past four weeks, and I uninstalled all of them, including three different versions of Microsoft Office, which took care of the SearchGol program that was hijacking my browser.
It took me ages to remove some of them, I had to be patient, but they are gone.
I got Jess to take a look when she got home, and she installed AVG for me and ran a scan, which has just finished, and everything now looks okay.
Thanks for the advice guys, if I have anymore trouble, I will just look through this thread for the answer!
You've been awesome.
Noomi, I would recommend you replace AVG with Avast. AVG has become almost as invasive as Norton and both slows your computer down noticeably.
Also you get "Web Rep" with Avast, bars that show how safe a website is or load the add on WOT, both will warn you when you're about to enter a reported attack site.
The only other add ons I use are Ghostery, Adblock and BetterPrivacy. Some recommend NoScript But I found it to be a major pain in the ass and stopped using it.
No security software will detect all malware. If you're infected, I think the best thing to do is to scan your computer with several good programs. I've used malwarebytes, Bit Defender, AVG, and some of the Kaspersky tools.
I've run into that several times. As long as the malware program is in the computer, it will make its changes every time you start the computer or other programs. This happens a lot with browser toolbars, defualt browser, browser extensions and plugins, and default search engines.
