A few days ago something strange happened while working on my laptop Windows XP. I believe that everything is straightened out and I am sure I have no bugs/viruses but it was scary and just because I'm curious I'm posting this to see if there is any explanation.
It all started after I logged on to a website that sells electronics, phones, music stuff, you name it, they have it. Now, at that time I had an outdated expired NIS2006.
After logging on to that website and re-loading several pages my laptop became more and more unresponsive. I could not click away that particular website; the 'end program' feature didn't respond; I did a force quit and re a reboot, 2 or 3 times.
Then the strangest thing happened. I have my homepage set to my own website so when I click on 'Netscape' that page opens up. I tried to erase the website url, and replace it with an other one. But it would not let me type in any new letters, it would shut down and Netscape closed. I tried this several times, same response.
Then i clicked on a folder with pictures that I have on my desktop. ...a browser opened to my homepage. ANY folder that sits on my desktop had the same response. By then I panicked. <sp?>. Somewhere in between what I just described I cleaned my disc and disfragmented <sp?> which saved me almost 20% of discspace (I removed a folder with big picture files a few days before).
Still every folder I tried to open opened a browser to my website page.
Then I tried to do a System Restore. But in the first window where you click on 'next' nothing responded. I believe I did a few more reboots, and tried the System Restore again. Nothing happened. When I tried to drag that open window to the side, the whole screen filled with copy upon copy of that particular window. I waited, and waited to see what would happen and finally did a forced quit again.
After several reboots and trying to do System Restore, finally FINALLY the 'next' button on the first System Restore window opened up the next window. I did the System Restore back to before the date I first logged onto that Electronic Website. It ran SR and after restart when I opened Netscape I could type in a new url. I went to a website (and I can't remember which but it was one that - when reading the description of the new (Dickerson??) worm - was mentioned that you could not go to. The fact that I could go there was a releave...
I then started to check my Norton version and ended up buying and installing NIS 2009.
Sorry for the rather extensive explanation but I really would like to know if anyone has some idea what could have happened.
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
Regards,
Milli