What are these files on my computer?

Question

I opened an email from someone last night (that i trust) and I had pop up's start happening. A new IE window pops up and it always says Internet Speed Monitor at the top and it is different web pages each time. And then I had a Mal-ware threat pop up and that I took care of but I can't get the Internet Speed Monitor to stop popping up with all these different web pages and it makes my IE close down. I ran my anti-virus software and it found 4 threats and took care of them but the Interent Speed Monitor is still popping up and then after a few mins closing my IE. I will close everything out and leave the computer for a few minutes and I will come back and it has come back up. So I started looking through my program files and such, but there are a lot there that I don't know what they are and I don't want to delete something that is supposed to be there. Is there any websites where I can go and put in these program file names and find out what they are???

I already have spybot s&d and i also avg anti virus and avg spyware stuff...none of these have caught what's wrong.

Answer 1

Hey, I work for an IT department. We get service requests all the time for stuff like this. Half the time, I don't know how to fix the problem. What do I do? Step 1, go to google.com. Step 2, type in the name of the files or the program name. Step 3, find the solution. We have problems that we don't know the answer to all the time. If you took your computer to a computer place and paid $100 to have it fixed, you'd mostly likely be paying $100 for the nerds to two the 3-step process I just mentioned. So don't feel like you don't have what it takes to fix this problem.

Just google Internet Speed Monitor and search tech forums. See what people have done about it. Also, don't rely only on antivirus software. Get Ad-Aware and Spybot - these two work well in conjunction with each other. You might also need to run these scans in Safe Mode (google how to enter safe mode - it's easy). Also, if you look through Add/Remove programs and see a bunch of unfamiliar stuff, it likely is just junk. Windows Hotfixes are windows updates (leave them alone). Also, try not to uninstall drivers (you'll see stuff like "Dell..." or "Intel" or "ATI..." or "Creative..." If you see the word driver, leave it alone. The rest of the stuff, like "winpop" or "popcap games" or ANY toolbar "yahoo toolbar, google toolbar, etc" you can get rid of.

I just googled it. Try out what this forum says to do:
http://forums.cnet.com/5208-6132_102-0.html?forumID=32&threadID=256526&messageID=2543307

Answer 2

Whoa!
First, I would go into Safe Mode and run your antivirus software.
(Restart, press and hold down F8 until you come to a black and white menu)
I think F3 is Safe Mode
Windows will not be loaded and hopefully you will catch any viruses.
When finished, exit to Windows
Restart
Drag your icons back into place.

Clean out your cache:
From Internet Explorer:
Tools
Internet Options
Delete
Delete all (click in the box to clear out temporary files)
set "days to store pages in history" to 0
Each Restart begins with a clean history.

Often times when friends send cutsey things, I ignore them and have advised them that I will do so so as not to hurt anyone's feelings - but I am virus-paranoid!

Answer 3

Sometimes, for persistent spyware, you have to turn off system restore, run the spyware checker, reboot, then if you want to, turn system restore back on. Try a few anti-spyware programs, sometimes they find different things eg superantispyware. It also shows what's running on your pc (or is that avg ?).

Answer 4

Spyware

google for AVG Anti-Spyware

its free

Answer 5

Spyware! Get Spybot Search and Destroy from http://www.spybot.info update it, immunise with it and finally do a full check for problems with it.