Hi, I have a Gateway MA6 model and it runs on Windows XP. (
http://www.governmentauctions.org/uploaded_images/gates-707351.JPG) My norton antivirus recently expired and I've been meaning to switch over users because I now have comcast and mcaffee is provided for free however I cannot get any antivirus site to open...and it is just antivirus websites. I discovered this as I went to download the mcaffee from comcast's website and it told me that the page was unavailable and then went to try to reboot my norton's antivirus and that too was not opening. Lately, my computer has been slow and freezing (to the point where I have to manually restart it) more which shouldn't happen because I removed the majority of my files to an external hard drive for safekeeping and have deleted any most unnecessary files from my hard drive/ removed programs I don't use or do not need. I did ctrl +alt+delete and looked under processes to see if I noticed anything fishy as I have removed spyware from there before but I don't see anything off hand that looks odd/I'm a 20 year old psychology student who wouldn't really know what else to look for and is not the most technologically savvy person out there. I also had downloaded a video messaging program called paltalk yesterday but deleted it from my computer as I don't have any real intention of using it.
I was wondering what I can do. I was thinking about some type of remover or downloading Combofix which I haven't yet done because right now I cannot get into any website which provides antivirus software. It pops up as saying "Oops this link appears to be broken..." For EVERY single antivirus software provider I have checked. All other websites will open normally.
Thanks so much.
EDIT: I also went to my hosts file and below my 127.0.0.1 local host file there is something that says:
"#AAW 195.245.119.131 browser-security.microsoft.com" and I believe this to be a malware so I am going to delete it.
Edited by aangelone1, 10 January 2010 - 10:50 PM.