Here is what happened. I was in the middle of downloading music using mediafire. I was downloading several songs and I searched in google and clicked on a link that was not mediafire on accident. After opening that page, my computer seemed to get a virus or something. I was seeing pop-ups that were fake "windows" screens that were titled 'Win 7' and it said that I had a virus and that I should buy/download some anti-virus program immediately. I have been affected by a similar virus before and followed some steps I found online and ultimately used a free version of "Malwarebyte's Anti-Malware" to remove that virus. So when this happened I used the Malwarebyte again and it found 7 viruses and I think that they were all trojans. I went to the see results page and removed them all, and it said in order to remove these a restart is required. So I restarted my computer.
After restarting, I logged in and everything seemed to be working fine. However when I went to open Internet Explorer, I was prompted by a screen titled Open With. It said "choose the program you want to use to open this file:" then "File: iexplore.exe" inside the form it listed under Recommended Programs 'Internet Explorer Microsoft Corporation'. There was nothing listed under other programs. I decided to click on the Internet explorer link. When I did, it temporarily (only for a spilt second) opened the browser which was a blank page. The browser then closed and I was prompted with a File Download screen. The title read "File Download - Security Warning". The form read "Do you want to run or save this file?" 'Name: iexplore.exe" "Type: Application 657KB" "From: C:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Explorer" and then there were three button choices 'run' 'save' and 'cancel'. If I chose run, it would just take me back to the original "Open With" screen. If I chose save, it would ask where I wanted to save, no matter where I chose to save, it would say "this file already exists do you want to replace it?" I chose no, as I did not want to screw anything up. This same series of events happens with any program I try to open, including firefox, itunes, pokerstars, solitare, minecraft, hamachi, etc. The only exception is that if I try to open anything from Microsoft Office like word, powerpoint, excel, it shows a prompt titled "C:\Program Files (86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE" the prompt read "C:\Program Files (86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\WINWORD.EXE Application not found".
The only way that I was able to access the Internet was to click on the link on the Open With form that reads "If the program you want is not in the list or on your computer, you can look for the appropriate program on the Web."
I am running Windows 7 (64) on a Toshiba Laptop. PLEASE HELP
Edit: Moved topic from Win 7 to the more appropriate forum. ~ Animal
Back to top
