Hi! I have several questions, I hope you don't mind.
I am kind of new to all this anti virus stuff and have been reading alot of the messages for information. It kind of gets overwhelming at times since there are so many different products available and some conflict with each other.... so one of my questions is... do the malwarebytes and highjackthis programs interfer with my norton anti virus program?
I have Norton Internet Security 2005, ver. 8.3.05 HPQ (60) and Norton Anit Virus ver. 11.5.11.1 HPQ (60) which was originally on my computer when I bought it in 2006. It updated after reformatting, and I keep doing the live updates, and I am wondering if it really is up-to-date as far as those programs go?
I had to reformat my computer recently due to getting a pretty bad virus or malware called op[1].exe which popped up all kinds of stuff I couldn't get rid of. It locked up most of my .exe files, IE8 and Norton. I couldn't get into safe mode either. I could only get on the internet (inbetween all the popups) by using my AOL program. It progressively got worse and did some really weird things to my computer, sent me to porn sites etc. and popups that weren't movable on the screen. I finally gave up trying to get rid of it after almost a week and just saved all my important files through windows explore. It didn't lock up that part of my system. When the screen finally went black, I decided to just go ahead and reformat which I was hoping to not have to do. Does anyone know if this virus/malware I got would infect the files I saved? I'm afraid to put them back on my computer now.
Oh, another thing I noticed when I was trying to get rid of that virus/malware I did a right click properties check on the big red unmoveable block in the center of my screen. Everything was unknown except for the address which was kaka://C://Windows....... I'm wondering how there can be something before the C://Windows??? Just curious.
The fourth item is just an informational thing. I used the USPS Shipping Assistant program before I reformatted, and when I went to the USPS site to reinstall the program, as I was downloading it I received a popup that definitely looked like NORTON saying that "setup[1].exe" was trying to get through, and that it was not a threat, low risk and outbound. I really looked at this carefully since I had just had all this trouble and it definitely looked like the NORTON popups. I blocked it once, and it came back immediately, so I blocked it always, and nothing since, but I didn't continue with the download. I guess I'm getting really paranoid about downloading anything even if it is from a pretty trusted and known site.
I would appreciate any comments, and sorry this was so long.