BleepingComputer.com: Can not download anything?

I have spent hours with HP support and hours trying to find out what the heck is going on. I even consider myself system literate.
But Vista is very foreign to me.

Anyway I have countless issues. May have to do a full system restore. At least that what HP says. I have had my new computer for about 5 months. I crash / run slow about once per month. Usually a system restore fixes my problems. Perhaps I have a nasty virus.

Here is a simple issue. I decided to download Firefox, thinking maybe something is wrong with Internet explorer. I do the download, its OK, then I click run, and immediately it says Explorer is not running, vista or windows is looking for a solution, then it says explorer is running, then the the window closes and the download ends. I have done this with a few other downloads (trying to get other virus stuff) and all just end. I did not get the same message as with the Firefox download....

Any advice? I have windows vista home premium edition X32 service pack 1. I am so tired of problems. Had windows 95 lasted for years, no issues...then windows XP same thing...years...now this brand new PC has been nothing but problems. Venting ...sorry...so frustrating.

Any advice or thoughts on what might be happening? Another thing, is my light on the PC under the power buttong just blinks constantly like something is running....

Thanks in advance for anyone's thoughts?

have you been downloading anything new that may be an infection?

No nothing new. Just tried some virus programs and Firefox.

Doing a system restore every month is not normal.
Copy/paste any error messages that you get, in their entirety, so we can see them
Also any events in the Event Viewer
I would also try a few online scans:

Be advised that some of these scanners will pickup things in "quarantine" from other anti-virus programs - so review the results carefully

http://housecall.trendmicro.com
http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan/
http://www.kaspersky.com/virusscanner Scan Only - no removal
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml
http://us.mcafee.com/root/mfs/default.asp
http://onlinescan.avast.com/
http://ca.com/us/securityadvisor/virusinfo/scan.aspx
http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/

<links compiled on 02/14/2008>

Thanks for all the links.

I am at work now, but will try them this evening and repost.

Not allowing me to download anything is very confusing.....

Lots of problems.

I could not load any of the download / scans from the above list.

Some said internet connection is too slow, but it is not. At least browsing with no issues.

Trend micro said an error occurred while transferring data.

Bit defender ran for 30 minutes - nothing changed

Panda just kept saying waiting....

When you ask about event viewer, what exactly should I look for? Saw a few warnings and errors..had over 6,000 records in there?

I am at a loss?

Quote

In just 5 months?
Post the 2 most recent errors

From event viewer: last 2 errors...(many more errors from past few days..all like below.
Faulting application ieuser.exe, version 6.0.6001.18000, time stamp 0x47918f0e, faulting module avgoff2k.dll, version 8.0.0.153, time stamp 0x4885e26d, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x000041e6, process id 0xad0, application start time

Faulting application ieuser.exe, version 6.0.6001.18000, time stamp 0x47918f0e, faulting module avgoff2k.dll, version 8.0.0.153, time stamp 0x4885e26d, exception code 0xc0000005, fault offset 0x000041e6, process id 0xc00, application start time 0x01c98d8237424311.
ieuser.exe (below is from details in event viewer)
6.0.6001.18000
47918f0e
avgoff2k.dll
8.0.0.153
4885e26d
c0000005
000041e6
c00
01c98d8237424311


I did manage to get Kapersky scan completed. No virus found on any scan, no warnings. Ran ad - aware, nothing found, except a few tracking cookies... Ran spybot nothing found.
Looks to be AVG virus, which I can not run, which I can not uninstall?

When I try and uninstall AVG, I got this error:
Installer initialization failed due to the following error:
Warning: Internal error. Dialog with id "WinFwDeactivationDlg" was not found in the setup.

Thanks for your help.

It looks like the AVG Office 2000 extension is the culprit in the 2 errors that you reported.

I'd suggest:
1 - download a fresh copy of AVG from their website
2 - uninstall your current AVG completely (using the free AVG Remover here: http://www.avg.com/download-tools )
3 - IMMEDIATELY install the fresh copy that you downloaded and update it.

You may have to do the first 2 steps on another system, then copy the downloads to a CD/DVD/Flash Drive and carry them over to the problem system.

THANKS!

I did need to download a new version of AVG from my laptop, to a flash drive.

Then I could use the AVG downloads remover program. It worked!!!!

I spent countless hours trying all sorts of things.

This fix took me about 15 minutes.

Thanks again......once again this site solves my problems and its free!!

Two other topics with similar issues:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic202925.html Unknown reason
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic203958.html ? McAfee corruption