Before I start, I would like to point out that I have already tried symantec's online support thing, and they couldn't really help... or rather they wouldn't without me paying them £70 first for their premium virus removal services, which I refuse to do. "Why do I pay them a subscription in the first place then??" Anyway, back to the situation in hand:
OK, so...
My laptop is loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium. I have Norton Internet Security and I've had it since around June last year. It stopped working in December when I got bombarded with hundreds of viruses and other crap presumably from a program I downloaded - and then immediately removed after having realised what had happened. That was my fault, I know. This was when I first contacted the technical support people (see above). They phoned my house up a month/2 ago to see if the problem was fixed, but I wasn't the one to answer so they thought it was the wrong number/ whatever and haven't rang back since. I tried downloading NIS081550.exe from the support centre, but that didn't work. A couple of weeks later I updated norton to NIS 2009; I can't remember what happened exactly, but I think there was a random task bar notification pop-up message that alerted me to it or something like that. And I thought that had fixed everything.
Among the malicious software that got on my laptop before was something called a backdoor.tidserv worm. I think it may have got into the norton system files, because NIS hadn't been working properly since. Weirdly though, the only virus NIS will detect now (apart from a tracking cookie which it removes and only after I had updated) is the backdoor.tidserv one (only approx. once every 3 or 4 weeks), which it says has been fully removed already. However, my laptop's still not functioning properly. Some of the many problems it is suffering from include:
- NIS system scan don't work properly. Before I updated NIS, it used to have to search through millions of files to complete a full system scan (only when it was scheduled though, I couldn't manually bring it up), but now it will only search through a maximum of 8,071 files, if any. Whenever I have tried using the utility within the past week it takes a minute for it to complete after having not scanned any files. I have tried custom scans but this doesn't work either. Right-clicking individual files in windows explorer/ my computer to scan them with NIS has the same effect. Besides, I could never do that for every single file on my laptop; that's just long.
- When I log-in, a "toshiba" supervisor password utilty window comes up asking to register and run HWSetup. I do not follow this in case it's something dubious.
- Icons on my taskbar are duplicated, missing or there is just a gap. Icons on my desktop have disappeared from the screen, even though the names which show up underneath are still there.
- The CPU meter on my sidebar says that the current CPU is never less than 60% even when I have no windows/ programs open or running. Most of the time it gets stuck at 100% for 5 minutes trying to open a window or the screen freezes completely and I have to take the battery out so I can reboot. It also 'sounds' like it's doing something all the time, if you know what I mean. Sometimes it beeps constantly and makes this jarring noise for long periods of time, especially if I try using the internet - like it's sending info to someone that I don't know about. My laptop has an intel centrino core 2 duo 2GB processor, so it's not like it was ever lacking in power.
- My internet browsers don't function correctly anymore. Firefox 3/ IE 6's respective home pages which I had set to google now come up as the entire contents of my system 32 folder or "http:///". Today using google, when I click on a link to any page, I am redirected to a load of adverts or a random search thing - the type of stuff people earn money from. For example, when I typed 'kristin eonline' or 'michael ausiello entertainment weekly' into google to find out what happened on Lost yesterday, I was redirected to the some Websites. They both seem to be search engines. I tried uninstalling both programs, rebooting, then installing previous versions but this doesn't work, which indicates that there is at least one other virus on my laptop that norton has failed to recognise/ get rid of.
- Removable disks such as XD cards or USB drives are inexplicably inaccessible sometimes.
- Again, about the noisy thing, (because it has just started again and is incredibly annoying) the laptop's 'innards' make long whirring noises constantly for up to hour an hour (which do change in pitch if I slap the side and then randomly start to slow down, but whatever's going on still doesn't stop). The only way that I have found to stop the noises is logging of and shutting down (but then I can't use my laptop 'coz it's not switched on, obviously). Sometimes they start as soon as I turn my laptop on, so it's not like i'm intentionally starting something (apart from windows).
AAGHHHHHHH!
I know most of these problems weren't caused by NIS, but it continually fails to pick up on any of them or get rid of them. Any suggestions?? That are FREE??
(I won't wipe my laptop again because i've already tried that and I don't to lose MY files again).
(Also - I know this might sound really stupid, but it is rather late - I don't want to have to download anything else if possible, unless it's from somewhere reputable that I recognise, just in case that's infected too; once bitten and all that...)
Even a different forum to post this to that you think could help would be helpful for me. As long as it's free.
Thankyou in advance to anyone who even bothers to read my overly long message/rant/complaint/ query of mine.
Sorry if it doesn't make a whole heap of sense. I hope someone out there can help me.
Thanks again,
broccoli
p.s. @ 03.55.48 norton auto-protect removed a packed.generic.200 trojan from my laptop. This hasn't fixed anything though - all my problems still persist.
<<Edit: Removed links to potentially malicious Websites>>