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Hi Sandy,
I will attempt to offer answers below:
On Wed, 11 Aug 2010, Alexander E. Mackinnon wrote:
> I went to www.lavasoft.com and downloaded their latest version as you
> suggested. My AVG virus detector went on red alert and told me I had
> downloaded infected files...
Instruct AVG to clean the files it has found. The problem with all of
these malware detecting programs is that they include a list of things to
look for that need to be removed from your computer. If one program
detects the list of names in another program, it thinks it has found an
infected program when, in actuality, it has simply found the list of terms
that the other program uses to search and scan your computer with. Since
LavaSoft is a reputable company and Ad-Aware is used worldwide, I highly
doubt their files are infected but then, you can never be too sure if a
hacker may have replaced some of their files with infected ones and that
they haven't found out yet, but I still doubt it.
On the safe side, have AVG give it a good going over and tell it to
isolate anything it finds in the Virus Vault. Until you actually install
the program from the zipfile, your computer hasn't been infected with
anything yet from that download. That's why it's always best to scan
everything before installing.
> I believe I am using the latest version of Firefox. Presumably that had
> the AVG feature that announced the alert.
I'm not aware of Firefox coming with AVG pre-installed but Firefox can
be added to with many protection features.
> Prior to downloading the lavasoft program I attempted to go into my
> options file and flush my cache. I am running vista and there did not
> seem to be an option to flush my cache or anything that resembled the
> term.
It would be under Options in Firefox, and under the last tab. You
should see a reference to cache. Also, Vista is a terrible operating
system, prompting Microsft to now offer Windows 7 (or W7) in its place.
> I did try file clean up and removed temporary files...
That's a good start. Temporary files are usually accumulated by
Internet Explorer. Disk Cleanup refuses to acknowledge Firefox's cache,
which is why you need to clean it up manually within Firefox.
As for registry stuff, if you have a program(s) starting up with
Windows that is dragging your system down, you can go into the registry
step-by-step until you reach the directory that holds all the 'runtime'
instructions, remove those particular instructions and the programs won't
automatically start anymore, making your system run faster. This is a
tricky fix to be used only by experienced computists.
I know with the older Windows (95/98/Me), there used to be a program
called QTTask.exe, which started a QuickTime (Macintosh video program for
Windows) scheduler. What it did, I'm not sure but it was like a boat
anchor for any computer and it would start up upon Windows loading. I
offered users a registry fix for that problem and they would report an
incredible speed-up in performance after the 'runtime' instruction was
removed. The program is still there and can be started manually, if so
desired; it just doesn't start up on its own anymore, as it was a real
resource hog.
I don't know if QTTask still exists in Windows Vista but there would an
small icon that looks like the letter Q in your lower set of start icons
in the Taskbar.
Tony @ CCN Help
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