Hey guys. I have absolutely no idea what the heck is going on with my 2 computers so I wanted to ask. This may be sort of long but I think it's worth it as I'm screwed:
Computer 1: a 3-year-old Dell inspiron laptop. Over the past month, I've used avast antivirus every week to make sure there are no viruses, and there haven't been any. I installed Ad-Aware yesterday for spyware detection and found 6 critical spyware systems on my computer that i deleted/quaranteened. Everything was fine up until yesterday. Out of the blue, now everytime I open internet explorer browser and direct it to a different website, suddently 52 new web browsers open immediately in the tab group and I have to shut everything down because everything goes haywire. Internet explorer still "works" per say as in it does open, but after that all these new browsers open and when I continue working they suddenly go away and then reappear all at once regularly. Just as I am about to shut off my computer because this is ruining my computer, I suddenly see a window that is downloading something on my computer quickly (I am guessing a virus, what else) that I have not requested to download. But why hasn't avast antivirus detected it then, if it's one of the best out there?
And when I direct the browser to hotmail, for example, instead of directing the current page to hotmail, a new browser opens that goes to hotmail. I have no idea why.
Computer 2: old Sony desktop. So a file was corrupted and i had to reinstall windows xp because it wouldn't reboot otherwise. Now, everytime i start the computer, it says "Operating system not found". So I RESTART the computer and it always works (i.e. reboots and gets to my desktop with everything functioning properly). But if I just shut off the computer and turned it back on, the same message appears. It's only when I restart without shutting down the computer that it functions properly EVERY time.
Now, if anyone would be so kind as to explain these anomalies, I would be very VERY thankful!
Computer 1: a 3-year-old Dell inspiron laptop. Over the past month, I've used avast antivirus every week to make sure there are no viruses, and there haven't been any. I installed Ad-Aware yesterday for spyware detection and found 6 critical spyware systems on my computer that i deleted/quaranteened. Everything was fine up until yesterday. Out of the blue, now everytime I open internet explorer browser and direct it to a different website, suddently 52 new web browsers open immediately in the tab group and I have to shut everything down because everything goes haywire. Internet explorer still "works" per say as in it does open, but after that all these new browsers open and when I continue working they suddenly go away and then reappear all at once regularly. Just as I am about to shut off my computer because this is ruining my computer, I suddenly see a window that is downloading something on my computer quickly (I am guessing a virus, what else) that I have not requested to download. But why hasn't avast antivirus detected it then, if it's one of the best out there?
And when I direct the browser to hotmail, for example, instead of directing the current page to hotmail, a new browser opens that goes to hotmail. I have no idea why.
Computer 2: old Sony desktop. So a file was corrupted and i had to reinstall windows xp because it wouldn't reboot otherwise. Now, everytime i start the computer, it says "Operating system not found". So I RESTART the computer and it always works (i.e. reboots and gets to my desktop with everything functioning properly). But if I just shut off the computer and turned it back on, the same message appears. It's only when I restart without shutting down the computer that it functions properly EVERY time.
Now, if anyone would be so kind as to explain these anomalies, I would be very VERY thankful!
