My husband's PC got hit with the Security Suite trojan horse, which prevented him from accessing any of his AV and antispyware programs. Finally, he was able to start Malwarebytes before Security Suite could load. He removed 11 infected files with Mbytes and removed 2 more with SpyBot. Both security programs were resident on his PC, along with System Mechanic, and Norton AV /anti spyware 2010. However, an error message referring to a missing file
"C:\WINDOWS\aveyatupek" kept appearing, and he was unable to access the internet. After much searching for the file, it was found on the Norton quarantine list and removed from history. That cleared up all of the infected files, but the internet still could not be accessed. All local connectivity items checked out OK. However, Windows connectivity diagnosis stated "WINDOWS cannot connect to the Internet using HTTP, HTTPS, or FTP. This is probably caused by firewall settings on this computer. Check firewall settings for HTTP port (80), HTTPS port 443, and FTP port 21." At this point my husband disabled Norton firewall and enabled WIN firewall, but no change. Also no change when both firewalls were disabled. Finally my husband gave up and took the PC to Best Buy. After reading my husband's report and doing a quick check of the machine, the Geek said that Norton had closed the firewall, which was preventing the access to the internet. He also said that the problem could not be fixed by reloading Norton AV, and that the only solution was to remove Norton AV altogether, which required a special tool. He also said that by having Malwarebytes, SpyBot, and system mechanic resident on the PC, they could be offsetting each other as well as Norton AV. Best Buy is charging $99 to remove all the AV and Anti Spyware programs and return the PC to a "vanilla" condition, whereupon, Norton AV 2010 can be reloaded. Can someone adddress the Geek's comments about conflicts caused by the multiple AV and anti spyware programs. Is my husband wrong to run Malwarebytes and Spybot in addition to Norton? The Geek also said System Mechanic causes a conflict, but my husband is skeptical of that claim. I'm writing this on behalf of my husband, because he won't get his PC back for a day or two. Thanks in advance for your responses.