very annoying computer trouble - help!!?

Question

okay, here's the thing. i have a dell desktop that i bought in feb. of 2004. for a while it worked great!! for about the last few months, when i search on the internet and i have 2 or more windows opened up, my computer just shuts off and reboots. the site this happens most is on myspace.com. i don't know what to do. lately i am beginning to suspect a virus, but im not sure. any ideas on how to scan my computer for free to see if it has any viruses? any other suggestions on what to do?? thanks ahead of time!!

Answer 1

Get avg at grisoft.com or avast at avast.com for free, or you can try online scanner at trendmicro.com. I would also get adaware SE personal edition from lavasoft.com which scans spywares. Install Adaware SE and a free antivirus program and scan in the SAFE MODE where the scanner work better.

Answer 2

You can Google for free anti-virus software and you'll find some. I've done that before but I can't remember the name of what I used. What else came to mind is that you could be running into a problem with your resources getting all tied up and this could be causing you system to crash. To check that theory out before getting on the net open up your task manager and select the performance tab. Keep that window up while you go onto the Internet and go through your routine. Keep looking at the CPU and Mem (memory) usage to see if they are becoming maxed out. Also if you are using Microsoft's Internet Explorer I would recommend downloading and installing Mozilla's Firefox browser. It is much better, safer and more stable. It also allows for tabbed browsing which means instead of having multiple windows open (which looks like multiple IE windows running) you will only have the one browser window open but your pages you are going between will have their own tab in the browser and you can just switch from tab to tab (page to page) which will greatly save on you PC's resources.

Answer 3

Yes, it is a virus. goto http://housecall.antivirus.com and do a scan. If your computer tries to reboot while scanning and shows a timer of 50 secs before reboot, goto the run command and type in: shutdown -a. That will stop the shutdown and let the scan continue. Then when complete, goto http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com and update all service packs to stop it from happening in the future. Last thing is goto http://grisoft.com and get the free AntiVirus program and install it on your computer.

Answer 4

First of all - get the stuff you really want to keep onto disk.

Clean the crud off your computer if you can - old files, old programs (uninstall them)

Download a few anti-virus and anti-spyware programs, oh and a firewall.
( Avg antivirus - http://free.grisoft.com/
Adaware anti-adware - http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/
Spywareblaster antispyware - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html
Zonealarm firewall - http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp )

It's almost guaranteed you got some nasties through either just using Internet Explorer, or downloading stuff you shouldn't.

Internet Explorer is big, slow, insecure (you're almost guaranteed to have some viruses and spyware right now), very out of date, and not customizable.

Drop Internet Explorer from use and get Firefox - sleek, fast, safe, easy to use, up to date, extremely customizable, blocks pop-ups... and it has a cool icon.
( Firefox web browser - http://getfirefox.com/ )

Firefox has pop-up blocking built in, and with just one add-on you'll rarely see another banner ad!
(Firefox adblocking add-on - http://adblockplus.org/ )

Install the programs and scan your computer. You might want to stay offline for this - you're not protected until AFTER you do it.

After that - password protect your computer account. If you use a wireless connection see if you can get it secured (passwords and encryption)

Make sure to update your virus and spyware scanners once a week, and check for updates to your firewall... and operating system.

Make it a habit to scan your computer for nasties, defragment your computer (My Computer > right click on your hard drive > properties > tools > defragment > defragment now), etc once a week.

Questions? Comments? E-mail me at amandakerik at yahoo dot com.

Answer 5

Get A New Computer, It Might Not Be Much More At All Than Trying To Fix Your Current One, Basic Desktps R Getting Real Cheap & It'll Perform Better Tahn Your Last One Ever Did.

Answer 6

Well, you can use KasperSky Antivirus, it is a powerful antivirus, try scaning your computer with it, if it doesn't work, try other antiviruses like McAfee or AntiVir. if it doesn't help you, then I think you should format your C: partition and reinstall your operating system, but this time Install a good antivirus like Kaspersky or AntiVir and set it on auto protect; so that whenever you get into an internet page that has a virus, it will be caught at once

Answer 7

go to www.pcpitstop.com and do full testing of your computer. They post results for you and you can also do a free virus check up. Also go to http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ and download Adaware SE. Then go to http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html and download Spybot. After you download them scan your computer for spyware and keyloggers.
Becareful when on Myspace some kids and adults tend to have viruses in some of the products they post. Some people even have viruses in AIM in thier profiles.
Good Luck

Answer 8

I agree witht he different man or woman its maximum probable undercover agent ware or maybe malaware.... through the way you didnt aspect out what variety of websites..... there are some web pages which will pop up about 3 or more beneficial iwndows on objective after ultimate them exhibiting appropriate links to different information superhighway web site

Answer 9

if its a virus, then you may want to put in it in a comp shop & have a whole reformat done at a professional level, but you can try a much cheaper way to do that by trying a system restore which you can find on your control panel. just take it back past the time you noticed your problem & restore your system to that date, i have used this method several times with good results. let me know the results at [e-mail]

Answer 10

The best solution is to find your software cds, windows, and other software. Copy any data from your computer onto a cd. And then format the hard disk and reinstall windows and other software.