This sounds like malware to me. There's some standard scanning stuff to try, and I'd like to see the log it generates.
Scan in safe mode:
Tap F8 repeatedly while booting up. You'll get a boot screen with choices. Pick Safe Mode. Your PC will boot in a low resolution state as most processes wont be running.
Go to "My Computer" (XP) or "Computer" (Vista), right-click the hard drive and select "Scan" from the drop-down menu.
All you'll see is an extra taskbar icon which will show a progress report if you hover over it.
Run Stinger:
Download and run the Mcafee free stinger program
http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
Set it to Report Mode (in Preferences) and post the logs of anything it detects.
Thanks, I will give that a try and report back.
Hello Somer -
I ran the scan in safe mode - there were no items detected, fixed, or quarantined.
I also ran the Stinger scan as directed - that came back clean too. Here is the report:
McAfee® Stinger Version 10.0.1.688 built on Nov 24 2009
Copyright © 2009 McAfee, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Virus data file v5000 created on Nov 23 2009.
Ready to scan for 1370 viruses, trojans and variants.
Scan initiated on Fri Jan 22 05:18:13 2010
Number of clean files: 188112
Any other ideas? One update on IE freezing at launch - sometimes after I launch the initial browser and it is frozen/clocking, if I launch a new one that sometimes unfreezes IE and the home page loads without having to disable McAfee Virus scan. Also if I open McAfee and use a link to the internet within McAfee help, that seems to launch IE without freezing.
Hmm... Ok, let's try this. Can you run Stinger for me again, except this time when it opens, go to Preferences and set the required sensitivity level to Very High. Also, set the On virus detection action to Report only to make sure valid files aren't accidentally removed. I'd like to see if Artemis finds anything there.
Will do. Just FYI I did set it to run with a level of "HIGH" (I would have picked "very high" but didn't know if that would make the scan take forever and I only had 45 min) - I will run again at a "very high" level and report back.
On the "very high" setting nothing was detected - similar log file as I sent earlier.
Very interesting. I've sent you an email. If you're okay with it, I'd like to do some more in-depth troubleshooting. I'll wait to hear back from you, and whatever we find we'll post back to this thread.
I hope someone can answer this problem. I have tried all the suggested solutions and nothing has worked. It all started yesterday when I managed to get the Artemis virus { I don't understand how I can get a virus when McAfee total protection is running all the time, But I did} When the virus was deleted It left me with this Internet explorer problem . I am also unable to back up my computer to a previous date. I have been a long time user of McAfee and sent them a lot of my hard earned money and find their customer support very lacking. I'm using a gateway with xp service pack 3. Internet explorer 8.
Fox fire and AOL browsers work fine.
any help will be greatly appreciated
I had a problem about a month ago when I supposedly got an Artemis virus. My microsoft money stopped working. The file that was deleted was part of the money operating system and neccessary for the program to run. I sent a copy of the file to McAfee and it was not a virus. So it was a false positive. This may be your case also. To get your program to run you may have to use the restore function in McAfee to restore the deleted file. I would send a copy to McAfee first to see if it is a real virus or a false positive.
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