Aagh. Just when you think you're safe, you get hit again.

It seems that whenever I go to anything on About.com (sometimes Google leads me there when trying to answer a programming question) I get spyware/malware or something like that. For that reason I usually avoid About.com. Sadly, I don't always check the URL of the Google results, and I get stuck with this.

OK. I booted up the computer, so I could do some programming work. I soon got the error message:



OK. I have a GB of memory and a 2.2 GHz AMD Athlon 64 3700+ processor. The chance of me being out of system resources at all is small, let alone at startup. One possible cause: Malware.

Further confirmation came with a Ctrl-Alt-Delete and checking CPU usage. There was a huge spike in use right at the START (during which I got the message; during this time my PC was on the slow side, not to my satisfaction). Also, I checked Memory usage on the Processes tab of the Task Manager. A quick scan down the list showed that explorer.exe was using 23,892 KB of memory! Not good. doing elementary school math, I discovered that in all, I was out 67% of my memory (not just explorer, but all the background programs as well). Ooookaay, something's wrong.

Of course, I'm not a complete idiot. I started updating and scanning. A-squared found 7 malicious objects, all adware and tracking cookies. SpyBot - Search and Destroy found nothing.  AVG Free found my HOSTS file, but it always does that (actually, is there a way to get it to stop recognizzing my HOSTS file?). Ad-aware found 5 critical and 40 negligible.  >Pic< Last, and least, Norton found nothing.

After all this, I ran HijackThis to see if anything glared out at me. Nothing did, but maybe you guys will see otherwise. Attached is the log as usual. After all this work, though, I'm running Defrag. Dilbert,

You have made the point again of why people should have a dual boot Linux setup for accessing the INTERNET, if for no other use at all.   I find it hard to believe that About.com is a source of spyware.  I get an email newsletter from About.com and occasionally follow a link from a newsletter to the website.  And, a brief look with Google for some INDICATION that About.com has any association with spyware turns up nothing.  Maybe you'd better guess again.
Do you have a regular maintenance schedule for your computer?
For you I'd recommend a clean OS install once a Month.  LOL .................... Ya , but he's using Grams computer ....lol......
She wont be HAPPY .......


dl65  Grammy is going to change her logon password on you!   It's my PC. She let me being my supa-coll electricity-guzzling supercomputer to her house.

Anyhow, I may be wrong about About.com but it seems to coincide with that site. Then again, I visit a lot of sites on my machine while reserching different coding techniques and any one of them could have malware on it. :-/

I'm taking it that my log is, malware speaking anyway, clean? If so, I'm happy; I booted my machine this morning and didn't get the error. It's also running a tad faster (defrag does work after all; Norton's Speed Disk is Norton's one redeeming factor) than before, and my CPU usage is far from 100%.

Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that after getting the error I also updated SpywareBlaster and downloaded a new HOSTS file. You think maybe I'm overreacting a little?

(As an aside, I have a question about SpywareBlaster. Does it need to be running while I browse the net to work, or does it work "behind-the-scenes"?) Quote

(As an aside, I have a question about SpywareBlaster. Does it need to be running while I browse the net to work, or does it work "behind-the-scenes"?)

Oh, I thought it was supposed to run in the background like too many programs today do. Ah, I had to ask that stupid question sometime.

Dilbert,

You have made the point again of why people should have a dual boot Linux setup for accessing the Internet, if for no other use at all.