Help
I've never posted here before .. and am only computer-savvy enough to cause problems, so please forgive me any ignorance.
I'm running XP professional on a 5.5 year old Dell Inspiron 8600. I love my laptop, and it's been hardy and up to everything I've thrown at it, until recently.
We trashed our land line in the fall of 2007; and since our primary connection mode was dial-up, I had to find a new way online. I signed up with ATT for a wireless G3 modem .. not quite as fast as cable, but a whole lot faster than dial-up. Shortly after getting comfortable, I decided I should probably increase my security software. I have all free or shareware ... Comodo, Threatfire, AVG 9.0, ccleaner, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and Super Anti-Spyware. I update those that need it manually on a daily basis, and lately have been doing full scans almost daily - though since I've stopped opening my AOL software (and accessing my AOL email via Mozilla), I rarely find anything when I scan.
However, regardless of the browser I'm using (I use Mozilla most often, but also have Google Chrome and IE available), it will often happen that pages I'm trying to get to are all of a sudden unavailable .. I get error messages and have to close the browser. When I try to remove and re-insert the modem into a USB slot in an attempt to "reboot" it, I'll then get an error message (Error 651). Nothing short of a total system reboot will allow me to get back online. I called ATT Customer Service and discovered this was a "page load error" and nothing to do with the modem or its software.
I'm certain it's not anything nasty that's gotten in, and I've been doing a CHK DSK and defrag every couple of days as well without any significant improvement. I can only assume there's a conflict among my various guardian software products - though I've been running all these things together for over a year without issue. I've made sure all the browsers as well at the ATT software is "excepted" or "trusted" in Comodo (and it's never stopped me from getting online .. it's only after I've been on a little while that the problem begins). Threatfire's website assures me that it's real-time virus protection software works unobstructed with other anti-virus software, so I wasn't concerned about it working with AVG .. yet the problem continues.
I can't seem to find a way to disable AVG totally, so I've tried just shutting down Comodo and Threatfire .. and so far, I don't seem to be having any connection problems. But I'm loathe to surf without Threatfire and Comodo (I don't particularly care for Windows' firewall, as its protection seems to be only one way) .. especially since I conduct a good chunk of my small home-based business via Facebook and a blog. And I'm on almost daily processing credit card orders, placing orders with vendors, and many other tasks .. several of which I'd be concerned about being compromised.
If my problem IS a conflict, can any of these things be tweaked to better allow them to work together??? I've been wasting way too many hours .. and full days .. on this issue, and my inventory is beginning to suffer. Would like to fix the problem and be able to get back to work.
Any suggestions?
Frustrated and over my head in northern NY
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