BleepingComputer.com: Downloaded Mcafee Pop-up From Aol Which Messed Up My Laptop!m

I downloaded the McAfee program and it immediately claimed to have found and blocked several trojans. As soon as it did that, the comp started acting a little crazy...

AOL signed off and the comp could no longer detect my wireless network. I tried to mess around with the McAfee program, which I suspected may have been the culprit, but I really had no idea what I was doing and in the end decided to remove the program entirely.

After I uninstalled the program, I restarted the computer and that's when things got REALLY bad. Most of the software listed on the windows toolbar completely dissapeared! They were still on the desktop and listed under programs, but most of them will not open (they all have some kind of error message when I try to open/run the programs). Not even going to safe mode helped!

To top it off, the computer cannot detect anything I plug into the USB ports (printer, USB key, etc..) and I can't perform a system recovery because I am unable to back-up my hardrive (the recovery wizard won't allow me to select the back-up option - it will switch my selection when I select "next"!).

The Hijack This program is one of the few that I can still get to run, but I don't have any way to post the log because I can neither acess the internet from my comp, nor can I save the log on an external device and post it through someone else's computer (which I am currently using to post this here message!).

Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks.

Have you tried to do a "system restore"?

Yes.

An error message pops up saying:

System restore is not able to protect your computer. Please restart your computer, and then run System Restore again.

When I restart and try again, the same message pops up...

This post has been edited by Bengy909: 09 September 2007 - 05:32 PM

I forgot to mention that every time Windows XP starts up, an error message appears saying:

PCF Manager Local Server has encountered a problem and needs to close.

It creates an error message which it suggests I send to Microsoft. When I press send, it says that the report was sent, but I'm not sure how that could be since there's no apparent internet connection...

I also ran superantispyware while in safe mode, which was something suggested on different posts in this forum, but it found nothing.

If anyone can help, I'd really appreciate it!

There is a removal tool for McAfee, I have seen a few posts where it was uninstalled but still causing headaches
http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/displaydoc.asp?fr...;CategoryId=107
You downloaded McAfee from?

Hi Bugballou,

Thank you so much for your suggestion! However, I'm still unable to connect to the internet from my computer. Is there another way to acquire the removal tool?

I'm relieved to hear that you've come across this situation before and I'm not the victim of some new evil type of infection. Is this problem exclusive to only certain computers? I forgot to mention that mine is a Sony Vaio PCG-V505BX/P Notebook computer.

I downloaded McAfee from an AOL pop-up window. It was an advert saying that AOL was offering free McAfee for its customers and since it all looked legit...