USVI-On-Line

I know some of you are very smart with computers. I am not, and I need help.

My boyfriend is gone tonight and he left his laptop sitting out in the living room. His is newer and faster than mine, so I decided to use it. I went to the following web sites: Yahoo to check e-mail, here, kraftfoods.com, and Facebook. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Later on I was watching TV and wanted to look up the bio of one of the actors, so I went to Yahoo and typed his name in. It let me click on Wikipedia, but when I went to hit back when I was done, it took me to some other web site. Since then, every time I try to search on yahoo it takes me totally random web sites, no matter what link I click. Even if I click on a link within yahoo it takes me somewhere else. I've been to the outdoorchannel, plus several places I suspect to be unscrupulous.

I figure it's spyware, but I ran AdAware and then tried to restart, and it's still doing it. I am not sure what to do. I don't know if it was on there before or if somehow I put it on. I also can't find any info by typing keywords into google, and usually I can learn more about spyware that way.

Anyhow, can anyone help? I really don't want to get in trouble for breaking my boyfriend's computer.

Since we all know you didn't watch porn on your boyfriends fancy computer..

It might have already been there, the spyware..

I'd play dumb!

Lulu,
Did you play any of the games or take IQ tests or whatever that were not facebook applications?

Like the ones that say sponsor or whatever?

I took ONE of those dumb tests and my computer went haywire. It kept opening the same window over and over. Luckily I shut it down in time.

I would go to the antivirus and run a special run. And also any spyware there is.

But you know if it clears cookies, he will know someone was there probably if he is real attentive.

So I don't think I would hide it.

Your call on that!

I didn't look at porn, but I can't vouch for him.

I figured out what it was. I couldn't use Yahoo, so I googled it (I was lucky because apparently this virus disables both on some computers) and found it. It's some sort of search engine redirect virus, and most likely it was already there. He has been using Google a lot more lately...

Anyhow, I think the Web site was computing.net, but whatever it was, they have tech people there who fix such things. I downloaded some sort of virus scan, ran it and voila! Life is good.

My mother and my great nephew both caught something like this on their PCs. I ran a lot of virus scans, adware and spyware sweeps.

Then I tried setting the computers back to a previous restore point. That didnt help.

On my Moms computer I ended up reinstalling the operating system. The virus she had was redirecting her web browsers, all of them, and her searches.

On the kid's computer I managed to actually find and delete the virus manually. It was the type that tosses up hundreds of pop up windows trying to convince you that you have a virus and need to purchase their program to fix it and protect yourself.

As an ex Mac user, I find all this virus stuff very frustrating. So far none of my four home pc's had gotten anything too bad.