hijack this

[hr.jr.]

in case you missed these two vital points:

1) my thread is not a playground for bashing other antivirus software

2) i'm broke, so unless you want to buy the best there is (in your opinion) back off.

i asked for a knight on a white horse, not on a high horse.

did i mention i'm in a bad mood today?

I am sorry that you are in a bad mood. I am personally not in a bad mood, so I am not allowing your bad mood to spill over onto me. If you consider stating facts as bashing security providers, then I guess I am of no help to you. It is not my desire to sell you a software for my profit. I get no commission from the sale of any security product. I am also on no "high horse." What I have said about security providers is not opinion; it is summarization of well documented facts obtained through years of reading extensive bench testing reports. I really did have a desire to help you correct your computer problem. If what you were doing was working, you would have no need to ask for help. Unfortunately, it appears that you have a problem that is going to require a little cash expenditure to properly correct. I really do emphathize with the fact that you can not spend that money right now. I no longer work on computers. I used to program and I will admit that I am no longer on the cutting edge, but I have remained very much in the technology loop even though I do not make my living that way at the present. What concerns me is the fact that if you do not get this malware completely off your machine, the long term loss will be significant. I do not know what you use your computer for. Possibly online banking or online bill paying. If you use your computer for either of those, It would cost you much more money in the long run to get hit by a harvester than it would cost you to properly secure the machine. You can also infect machines you communicate with through e-mail etc. You can infect networks you log onto. You can be using the machine today and it is fine; start up tomorrow and windows OS is 40% corrupt. You asked for an I.T. geek. You got the opinion of an I.T. geek. You did not like what I had to say so you let your bad mood spill over onto me. I am sorry that what I had to tell you was not what you wanted to hear.

My last 2cents before I leave you alone is Use CC cleaner. It probably will not work, but it is free and stands a much better chance of getting the registry straightened out than the free malware programs.

I wish you the best in resolving the problem.

[paperflower]

I am reading your post a few days late but I LOVED LOVED LOVED IT....little do you know one thing that makes more sense than what you are going through is that you cannot control your husband....where are the people in this world that seem to forget this? Well all over and you run into them every day.....you were not acting irritible and I don't like the fact that you apologized for it. You don't owe any one that.

Now thankfully your PC is working much better.

how did this thread end up being a tit-for-tat war between mcafee and norton users?

for future reference, please..... when someone asks for help and tells what they have on their system for security software, don't start dogging what they use. i've heard just as crappy things about norton as i have about mcafee, as i have about trend micro, and nearly every other suite of security software on the market. and i've used all of them at one point or other. ironically, the only one i have never heard anything bad about is avg's FREE security suite. go figure.

every IT person has their favorite that they are loyal to, and are going to bash the competition. i don't care what IT Techie says mcafee is crap, or norton is crap. in my personal experience, both work just fine.

now, all that behind us, thanks for the many suggestions, most of which cost money. i have no money. none. zilch. squat. before long none of this is going to matter what is wrong with my computer because we may very well be without electricity very soon. and without electricity, the computer won't work. so while i understand the concept that ya get what ya pay for, what i choose to get is food to put on my table, water to take a shower with, etc.

regarding any method of control over my husband's choices, God has made it clear to me in no uncertain terms that i am to leave that between God and my husband and i'm not to interfere. my interference causes strife within our marriage, makes me an ungodly nag instead of a godly wife, and drives my husband even farther from God. so thanks for the concern, but my husband is a grown man. i may not like his choices, but they are his to make. i have taken onelight's suggestion of creating a separate user profile so that he doesn't have administrator rights, so that malware can't auto-install without permission. and i did that, not because it manages my husband, but because it protects an expensive piece of nuts and bolts from catching any more virtual STD's.

sorry, i'm just a little bit on the irritable side today.

on the bright side, with onelight's help via PMs all day yesterday, i have managed to get the problem under control. i'm not sure what did the trick, and it's not 100%, but i am getting far less browser tabs opening to random crap, and only getting search results hijacked about 20% of the time now. it's a major improvement, and one i will live with.

[paperflower]

Oh my.....I just finished reading the rest of the posts.....ummmmm didn't they read you are working much better? That you are having less problems......

Just gives me more reason to realize that people don't read, don't listen and then I say again don't listen.......!!!!!!!

[hr.jr.]

Oh my.....I just finished reading the rest of the posts.....ummmmm didn't they read you are working much better? That you are having less problems......

Just gives me more reason to realize that people don't read, don't listen and then I say again don't listen.......!!!!!!!

I read quite well. If you had read my post, you would see this. Working better but not completely resolved is the key. What that means is that the damage of the malware has been contained for now but rest assured it will unpack again at a most inopportune time. It is kind of like repairing a car. You can use the $175 factory part or the $25 aftermarket part that works about 80% up to specification. You take your car to a mechanic who tells you to replace the aftermarket part with an OEM part and you accuse him of brand bashing. Since no one seems to be interested in properly fixing the problem; I will gladly exit the conversation. I do sincerely apologize for upsetting anyone. It was not my intention.

[paperflower]

In that same post she wrote she doesn't have the funds to pay for making things better. Simply put, she is content with where things are right now. That's the part when you read what is said and leave it there. No money=no money.

Oh my.....I just finished reading the rest of the posts.....ummmmm didn't they read you are working much better? That you are having less problems......

Just gives me more reason to realize that people don't read, don't listen and then I say again don't listen.......!!!!!!!

I read quite well. If you had read my post, you would see this. Working better but not completely resolved is the key. What that means is that the damage of the malware has been contained for now but rest assured it will unpack again at a most inopportune time. It is kind of like repairing a car. You can use the $175 factory part or the $25 aftermarket part that works about 80% up to specification. You take your car to a mechanic who tells you to replace the aftermarket part with an OEM part and you accuse him of brand bashing. Since no one seems to be interested in properly fixing the problem; I will gladly exit the conversation. I do sincerely apologize for upsetting anyone. It was not my intention.

[hr.jr.]

In that same post she wrote she doesn't have the funds to pay for making things better. Simply put, she is content with where things are right now. That's the part when you read what is said and leave it there. No money=no money.

Oh my.....I just finished reading the rest of the posts.....ummmmm didn't they read you are working much better? That you are having less problems......

Just gives me more reason to realize that people don't read, don't listen and then I say again don't listen.......!!!!!!!

I read quite well. If you had read my post, you would see this. Working better but not completely resolved is the key. What that means is that the damage of the malware has been contained for now but rest assured it will unpack again at a most inopportune time. It is kind of like repairing a car. You can use the $175 factory part or the $25 aftermarket part that works about 80% up to specification. You take your car to a mechanic who tells you to replace the aftermarket part with an OEM part and you accuse him of brand bashing. Since no one seems to be interested in properly fixing the problem; I will gladly exit the conversation. I do sincerely apologize for upsetting anyone. It was not my intention.

The fact that one will spend a little now or a lot later still should be pointed out.

There are a lot of things that I say I do not have the money for. What I really mean is there is no allocation in my budget for them and I do not intend to divert funds from other areas to cover them. Without knowing LadyC, I have no idea if "not having the money" means I am broke or if it means that the items are not high enough on the priority list to justify the expenditure. Sometimes telling people what they want to hear is the easy thing but not the best thing. If the free programs worked effectively, the paid ones would not be in business.

[Guest LadyC]

thank you paperflower

ok, i think i found the remaining 20% of the problem. it was in a multi-engine toolbar that i've used for over a year. IT seems to have been infected somehow. anytime i used it to search from, it got hijacked. after all the myriad of stuff onelight had me do, i'm not sure what it was that worked, but after all that, if i typed in the url of a search engine and searched from there, no hijacking. once i figured out that i needed to stop using the toolbar, the remainder of the problem disappeared.

and paperflower, you're right, and i'd like to reiterate that... no money equals no money. i made it quite clear that this was a choice between putting food on the table or fixing a computer. i also made it quite clear that once the power gets shut off, which will happen in about three weeks if my husband doesn't get a really good couple of weeks at work (which does not look likely) the computer problems won't matter.

i literally have no money. i have less than $30 in the bank. my husband has worked ONE DAY in the last TWO WEEKS and is not yet eligible to re-apply for unemployment. our housemate has no income at all. and i work about 15 hours per week making minimum wage. no money means no money. how much more of my personal info do i need to humiliate myself with by posting publically for that to sink in?

hr. jr., i know you were trying to help, but seriously. when helping people in the future, try to be more sensitive to their circumstances. because when you aren't, you cause the other person to become hyper-sensitive and defensive, which is what happened yesterday. and as far as the mcafee vs norton or whatever, a much less offensive way to put it, instead of calling mcafee "mccrappy" or saying it's a piece of crap, is to simply say what you eventually got around to saying in a round about way... some software will sometimes catch what others miss. yes, i got the opinion of an IT geek. i got the opinion of MULTIPLE IT geeks on this thread. some of those geeks hate mcafee like you and onelight, and someone else hated norton. so there ya have it. it's not about who makes a profit off what, it's just that every person has their favorite for whatever reason, and will often think every other product is inferior. i don't like listening to the wars break out, and that is NOT what i asked for.

irony here... you and onelight both hate mcafee... and yet onelight was an enormous help to me, did not offend me, and certainly didn't spend time and waste breath trying to defend or justify having offending me. and i imagine he's enough of a gentleman that he wouldn't have justified it even if he had offended, which he didn't.

[hr.jr.]

thank you paperflower

ok, i think i found the remaining 20% of the problem. it was in a multi-engine toolbar that i've used for over a year. IT seems to have been infected somehow. anytime i used it to search from, it got hijacked. after all the myriad of stuff onelight had me do, i'm not sure what it was that worked, but after all that, if i typed in the url of a search engine and searched from there, no hijacking. once i figured out that i needed to stop using the toolbar, the remainder of the problem disappeared.

and paperflower, you're right, and i'd like to reiterate that... no money equals no money. i made it quite clear that this was a choice between putting food on the table or fixing a computer. i also made it quite clear that once the power gets shut off, which will happen in about three weeks if my husband doesn't get a really good couple of weeks at work (which does not look likely) the computer problems won't matter.

i literally have no money. i have less than $30 in the bank. my husband has worked ONE DAY in the last TWO WEEKS and is not yet eligible to re-apply for unemployment. our housemate has no income at all. and i work about 15 hours per week making minimum wage. no money means no money. how much more of my personal info do i need to humiliate myself with by posting publically for that to sink in?

hr. jr., i know you were trying to help, but seriously. when helping people in the future, try to be more sensitive to their circumstances. because when you aren't, you cause the other person to become hyper-sensitive and defensive, which is what happened yesterday. and as far as the mcafee vs norton or whatever, a much less offensive way to put it, instead of calling mcafee "mccrappy" or saying it's a piece of crap, is to simply say what you eventually got around to saying in a round about way... some software will sometimes catch what others miss. yes, i got the opinion of an IT geek. i got the opinion of MULTIPLE IT geeks on this thread. some of those geeks hate mcafee like you and onelight, and someone else hated norton. so there ya have it. it's not about who makes a profit off what, it's just that every person has their favorite for whatever reason, and will often think every other product is inferior. i don't like listening to the wars break out, and that is NOT what i asked for.

irony here... you and onelight both hate mcafee... and yet onelight was an enormous help to me, did not offend me, and certainly didn't spend time and waste breath trying to defend or justify having offending me. and i imagine he's enough of a gentleman that he wouldn't have justified it even if he had offended, which he didn't.

I did not really understand your circumstances. I apologize for being insensitive.

[OneLight]

One correction. After Norton, McAfee is my second choice!

[Guest LadyC]

One correction. After Norton, McAfee is my second choice!

hr. jr, you're forgiven. just learn from this... many times people really don't want to lay out the details of how dire their finances are. but i'm blessed... my landlord has told me she won't put me on the street. she may make us move into a different house that she uses as a transitional house for families in need, but she won't put us out. she's a christian, she's a friend, and she literally bought the house i'm living in specifically to rent to us. so no matter how bad it gets, we'll at least never be without a roof over our heads.