Both my laptop and desktop computers have been running painfully slow, so last week I decided to do a little maintenance. I run msconfig and check startup and find brastk, lphc19nj0e15o on my desktop and NA on my laptop. Google research reveals these may be viruses/trojans. In addition there are blank spaces in both that appear to be hidden programs running. I am running Norton Security Suite on the desktop and Norton Internet Security 12 on my laptop.
I go into safe mode and run the norton products and they find three or four low level tracking cookies. Norton Power Eraser finds nothing on either computer. I did research and downloaded Housecall and Superantispyware and spent the next several days running all four programs continuously one after another, removing close to a thousand "threats" on both machines. Last night, all four programs finally came up with no threats after a full scan.
The problem is, when I do msconfig it still lists brastk, lphc19nj0e15o on my desktop and NA on my laptop, plus those blank spaces and a few programs I am not sure about. After a week of struggling with my computers (and getting behind in my work), I am not sure if I made progress or spent the past few days deleting false positives.
When I do online research I find articles from 2008, but I am hesitant to follow advice that is nearly four years old, and some of the links I try no longer work. Can anyone help?