LOOK AT MY HEINOUS WESLEY AND FRED ICON. LOOK.

[laceblade]

Okay, so that aside, there's something severely wrong with my computer. Last night, I had it at Antoine's. I was spending my time surfing LiveJournal, looking for Wesley icons (because I am awesome). I think that other windows I had open included Microsoft Word, Gmail, and various Internet sites.

I started getting some pop-ups in Internet Explorer, which was odd since I was using Firefox. When I tried to do Ctrl Alt Delete, a window popped up, telling me that my Task Manager was unavailable. I've run some virus and spyware scans (I have avast! and SpyBot: Search and Destroy) and both of them found stuff (they always do; apparently I visit bad sites or something!), but my computer is still weird.

The background on my computer is the same shade of blue as my start bar. In yellow text, it reads:

Warning: Spyware threat has been detected on your PC.

Your computer has several fatal errors due to spyware activity. It is strongly recommended to install an antispyware software to close all security vulnerabilities.

Antispyware software helps protect your PC against spyware and other security threats.

Click here to scan your PC for spyware.

Which leads me to believe that my Desktop background itself is infested! Clicking on "Click here" leads me to this page, and no, I haven't clicked the links to download their weird Spyware stuff.


In addition to Spyware crap, my Internet is being strange, too:

Websites that work:
LiveJournal
Anime Club forums
My Google Homepage
WiscMail
CNN
Netflix

Websites that don't work:
Trying to do an actual Google search (when I click "Search," the page just keeps loading until forever
Gmail (Again, the page loads until forever)
Blogger (It loads until forever)
Other people's blogs hosted on Blogspot


Hmmm. Now that I look at the list, I feel really stupid: maybe it's Google that's the problem, and not my computer? Is anyone else having weird problems with Google stuff?


In Conclusion: Please help me!

Comments

[suibhne-geilt.livejournal.com]

Reboot and run a virus scan immediately.

I was looking up dumpster rental companies to deal with some impending remodeling debris, and one of their sites had been hacked, and I got the exact same thing happening - a butt-ton of freak IE pop-ups even though I was using Firefox, my desktop had been hijacked, and I kept getting offers to install & run a spyware checker.

So, I pulled my wireless adapter out and did a shutdown & restart. When I ran a virus check, sure enough, there was fresh unpleasantness in my D: drive.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Oh, on the D drive? I've rebooted and run the virus scans several times, but I didn't scan the D drive because I don't have a CD in....maybe I'm confused as to what the D drive actually means?

Okay! So, next, I will run a virus scan and make sure to include my D drive!

Thank you for the tip!

[suibhne-geilt.livejournal.com]

Oh - on my computer, the hard drive has two partitions. The C: is where all of my programs & files are, the D: is where the OS itself actually is. So, I didn't have a virus camping out in my CD drive, it was hidden in with my OS files.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Weird.

Yeah, I tried searching the D drive, and it wasn't there.

I'm running the virus scan again, but this time it's not finding anything, :/

[houseofduck.livejournal.com]

I have been having the same issues with the google sites as of late... I think the issue is on their side for sure...!

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Well, that's good to know about Google, anyway.

[hellocthulhu.livejournal.com]

I hate to tell you this, but I've been doing some research on infections that sound similar to yours, and everything I've seen says that this is pretty severe =( As in, I haven't found a simple fix. My suggestion would be to go get a program called SuperAntiSpyware, which a lot of people seem to be recommending. Install it and reboot into safe mode. Run all your antivirus and anti-spyware scanners several times, don't reboot back into normal mode until your system is coming up clean. See if that does it.

Alternatively, get a Mac or Linux =)

The Google has been kinda slow lately, but I think that's because they're rolling out new updates to some things.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I will look into this SuperAntiSpyware stuff, and make Antoine help me run it in safe mode.

[nearlymay.livejournal.com]

Rebooting in safe mode is easy, just hit the F8 key repeatedly while it's booting up.

And then yeah, you should go run your spyware and antivirus stuff there. Make sure they have the newest updates before you do it though (so maybe update them, THEN reboot in safe mode, THEN run them.)

Hope it gets worked out! If the spyware and antivirus files are up-to-date, and your computer is capable of rebooting, it should be ok.