PC Troubles

[Magpie]

After my son has had a big burst with on-line games, some annoying things have happened on our computer.
1 - The laptop's keyboard only works as if the caps lock is always on, but the external keyboard we have plugged in (so he doesn't wreck the real keyboard) works fine
2 - A pop-up website keeps coming up, saying we have won millions of dollars, if only we send money to claim it. This isn't like normal pop-ups, which we have blocked, but it's like it's always running in the background.
3 - The internet connection keeps dropping out, and the "work offline" in Files keeps being ticked. We un-tick it, but it automatically ticks it again.

The computer is divided into users, and these problems are all on my son's "side" only, mine is fine.

We are running Windows XP and IE (yes, I know... )

Any ideas?

[Magpie]

Oh, and we are on Broadband.

[Shirley]

Have you done a virus scan?

[Magpie]

Yep, we ran Norton yesterday. I know everyone else hates Norton, but we find it's ok. He, he, feel ilke we do run everything on our PC that everyone hates - Norton, IE, XP - I feel like I'm confessing things!

[Shirley]

Hey... before I go on, I'm no computer expert even though I've used them for years... so anything I say is just clutching at straws.

Have you checked for spyware at all??

Oh, and for the record, I've got XP and Norton (although am going to change soon as I don't like it lol) and have only recently ditched the IE7 in favour of Opera or Firefox. Both of those alternative browsers are easy to download if you want to give them a shot... you don't need to get rid of your IE if you don't want to.

Do you use the laptop keyboard too - and does it work ok when it's you logged on rather than your son?

[Magpie]

Yes, I use the keyboard on the laptop, everything behaves itself when I'm on my side.

However, after we try his side, and it keeps dropping the connection, no-one's conection works, until the PC is turned off, and the modem is unplugged and plugged back in. So he can't use his side at all now, without messing it all up that way.

I have only recently heard of Opera, and don't know much about it - is it new?

[Muddypause]

That sounds mighty suspicious, doesn't it?

I've no experience of modern stuff like XP, but I'd go along with Shirlz suggestion of checking for spyware. Download and insatall a copy of Ad-Aware, and run that - see if it find anything.

I used to use Opera a while back, and found it an excellent browser. It used to come in two versions, a free version that had an advert banner across the top, and a paid-for version that didn't. Don't know if that is still the case. I found the adverts rather irritating (so many web adverts try and attract your attention by continually flashing, and things like that), and moved to Firefox. On early versions of Opera, you could accidentally delete the folder that the adverts were placed into, and this would disable them. Didn't work on later versions.

[Magpie]

OK, so I've downloaded and run Spybot, but it didn't find much, mostly Microsoft-related things!

Any other ideas?

[Andy Hamilton]

HAve you looked at the processes that are running?

There is a big list in the task manager, look at this list and then look up the programs that are running. Then look up on google the names of these processes. IF there is one that appears to be a virus try manually deleting it. careful not to delete processes that you need though.

[Cassiepod]

Alson, Don't forget that viruses can include names like microsoft in them to make them look official when they're not...

[Magpie]

Thanks guys, I think it's all fixed now. Seems that, even though I'm paying for spy/malware to be removed by Norton, they don't do a very good job. I ran Ad-Aware and Spybot, these seem to have fixed prob's 2 and 3. And the keyboard - the Fn key had been locked on and I had no idea how to unlock it! After 6 hours working on it all, everything seems ok.... But man - what a time-waster these things can be!

[catalyst]

But man - what a time-waster these things can be!

yep, you wanna start writing code, all day can just disappear (but its fun!)