Computer Problems...

[Andydg]

***

[DylanTrott]

Thats why you need to inherit your cousins iBook like I did. No issues with me. Lemme call my friend whos really good with windows and crap and see if hes got any good ideas.

[ericn1300]

What OS?

[DylanTrott]

Are you talkin to me or him? I'm runnin OS X 10.3.9

[DylanTrott]

Yea being broke is lame. I'm a kid I think I may land this job at the library though! I would suggest saving for a macbook.

[Oz]

Hmm...sounds like you were taken off the Local Administrator list for some reason. Try this:
-Reboot into Safe Mode with Networking
-Login as Administrator (password blank unless specified during install)
-Re-attempt the Firefox update
-If successful, open Computer Management and open up Local Users and Groups > Groups > Administrators and add the user account you were logged in with previously

Reboot and next time Firefox updates itself (or you want to change the time), the problem shouldn't happen again.

[Oz]

What do you mean a "program is using" it? What error message are you getting? Can you screenshot your problem and post it here?

[Oz]

Looks like malware or virus type behaviour to me.

1. Uninstall your current AV
2. Get the 30 day NOD32 trial from www.nod32.com, update the definitions and run an in depth analysis
3. Get a copy of Hitman Pro, go into settings and "accept all end user license agreements" then set it to run overnight. This program automates the downloading, installing, updating and running of a range of anti-spyware / malware programs.

Let us know how you go.

[Neutrino]

Hmm either you have some random corrupted system files or you might have been infected or worse rooted.


As OZ mentioned get NOD32 and run an indepth scan, furthermore try an online scan with bitdefender: http://www.bitdefender.com/ (must use IE to scan)


To scan for rootkits use get the trial version of blacklight from here:
http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/try_blacklight.html


as far as you not dl anything recently that is not 100% protection, you might have caught a drive by script (even Firefox is not 100% safe which is why i use the noscript extension) or you might have been rooted a long time ago and they just injected somenthing new.

If you have any issues accesing security sites that is 99% that your host file has been modified.

You can find it here: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ETC (open in notepad:

it should look like this:

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

127.0.0.1 localhost

[Oz]

^ Top advice.

[Neutrino]

Originally Posted by Andydg

My dad just got back from Washington and he took a look at everything and he basically told me I was fucked. We tried everything he could think of and nothing is working. I went to Tiger Direct last night and picked up a 320 gig hard drive and I'm just going to start over and reformat my old drive.

Would it be ok to just drag my docs, pics, mp3's, and videos over to the new hard drive once I get that going or should I copy them all onto DVD? I don't want the new hard drive to get infected with whatever the hell this one has.

As long as the copy operation is done from a clean system and you only copy media files you should be fine. Docs might want to scan them for macroviruses.