Hey llamaturgy or any of my other computer-savvy friends!!!

[shiraz_gypsy]

My computer at home is acting severely wonky lately and I cannot for the life of me figure out why.  One major problem I have, I need someone with better computer troubleshooting skills than me to help me fix

Comments

[llamaturgy]

Can you right-click in the System Tray and choose Task Manager there?

Have you tried hitting Ctl+Alt+Delete twice in quick succession?

Also, I have to ask, have you tried hitting C+A+D when your computer isn't frozen, to make sure it works? What you wrote sounds like "yes," but I want to make sure ;)

Also, try Ctrl+Shift+Esc.

[my_cnnr]

I've picked up a virus that disables task manager - I've been able to identify it *as* a virus (Win32 was somewhere in the name), but haven't been able to get it out...big help, right?...I'm having a friend who does fixes these things for a living come out to help - if you don't get an answer from one of your more knowledgeable friends, I can give you his contact details

[llamaturgy]

You likely do have a virus or other malware, but I was trying the easy stuff first. Without knowing the name of the malware it's hard to say how to get rid of it.

Do you run an up-to-date virus scanner? If so, give it a shot. If not, try AVG Anti-Virus if you want a free one. I think McAfee has a "web scan" they let you do for free. "avast!" is also free. Personally, I use (and pay for) NOD32. It's an excellent product with none of the bloat and overhead that make McAfee proper and Norton such hellish pieces of software. Not to mention the way Norton digs hooks into your system that can actually break it worse than any virus.

hellish software

[my_cnnr]

oh lord...now you're scaring me!

I use the virus program that comes with Yahoo(Norton or McAfeefor mail and ComputerAssociates for virus/spyware), and its on auto-update...I imagine its probably shite...I tried one suggested by the place where I eventually found out about the virus (another happy little feature is that it keeps trying to open some window) and it vaulted something or other, but then it got into a fistfight with the Yahoo program and I had to uninstall it...it never did manage to pick up the one that disabled task manager...if I opted for the NOD32, would it have the same issue with Yahoo? ...its incredibly annoying - it tells you repeatedly that its having a 'thing' with the other scan and you're not benefiting from all their services

Re: hellish software

[llamaturgy]

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about Yahoo's interaction with other software. I do know that NOD32 has a 30-day free trial, however.

Also, you don't want to have two anti-virus software programs running real-time protection. Each software calls it something different (just to make it easy for us end-users), but what it means is that the software monitors your entire computer ALL the time. Every time a file is touched, etc, etc... it scans that file. Only one anti-virus software at a time can be doing that without causing bad conflicts (most of the time, they just won't let you do it). What you can do is run one as real-time protection, and then schedule a full system scan with BOTH software packages, as long as it's for different times!