I have been using a laptop for college course work that had no virus protection installed. I had an issue saving an online exam with the Respondus lockdown browser (etehrnet cabled). Later that day using computer (wifi), web surfing was exceeding slow and I asked a person next to me if they were having similar issues. There experience was fine. I tried to open task manager to see what was hogging resources on my computer. Task manager is surprisingly greyed out. Other attempts to access task manager indicate it was disabled by the administator. I am the admin as it is my personal laptop. Then notice upon shutdown that my only option from the START button is to Log Off. I can shut down after logging off, but I am sure that shutdown has always been an option from the Start menu.
Brought computer home, and installed Norton Internet Security 2012 and updated the software online. I have a 3PC copy that had at least on install left. Ran a quick scan and full system scan and nothing significant was found - few tracking cookies etc. Tried to do a system restore, and that fails each time using several different dates.
This is an older laptop and when I began my courses in the fall, I used the Dell software to restore the system to the factory shipping settings. It has very limited use since that time - maybe on 4 hours each week nearly always at the university and connected to their network - either wired or wifi. I suppose a factory reset would do the trick, but this remains rather puzzling to me.
Thanks for any thoughts, advice or help.
Bob M.
Computer Details:
Dell Inspiron 6000
Intel Pentium M 1.6 GHz
512 RAM
MS XP Media Center Edition Version 2002 Ser. Pk 3