Computer problems

[Steve Burke]

My computer usually runs without any problems at all, and I'm very careful indeed at avoiding sites I don't know. However yesterday I was watching a music video (something I've never done before, partly because our broadband is so slow), and the computer froze. After several attempts at restarting it, the computer still ran extremely slowly indeed and also needed a start-up repair on shutdown.

 

I ran Malwarebytes (nothing showed here) and the paid for version of AVG. The latter picked up and got rid of some tracking cookies (Revski). After that everything was fine.

 

However a little later I had an update for Google Chrome (IE9 is my default browser, Vista the OS). I always do my updates via Secunia for safety as I've had false update requests for Adobe products before. The Babylon search engine came up (I've had this tried before) including a tick box to disable AVG Safe Search. I deleted the Babylon page and checked with CCleaner that any Babylon cookies were still being deleted on every clean (they were).

 

So some questions:

 

Can a tracking cookie cause such problems?

 

Is there anything further I need to do now?

 

The paid-for version of AVG is set up to run daily, I run Malwarebytes every couple of weeks, Secunia checks for program updates weekly, plus I have Spybot running in the background. Windows Defender is disabled - is it OK to reactivate this?

 

Is there anything further I can do to prevent this happening?

[kirisute]

tracking cookies wont cause an issue at all: they simply do what they say on the tin...allow a website to "track" whether you have visted before or not...ie store info for advertising, username and password, last visit date and time etc

your pretty secure by the sound of it.

 

grab yourself CCleaner and then have a look at what BHO files (toolbars) and plugins you have in your IE system.

to do that:

open ccleaner

click tools

click startup

in right hand window click Internet Explorer

 

this will now list all the toolbars etc that load when you run IE. anything you don't want just disable. then est...if your happy then you can delete them from within the same interface in ccleaner.

this will keep IE and other browsers (repeat the process for other detected browsers) running happily without interference from toolbars etc

 

finally resetting IE to defaults doesn't do any harm at all once in awhile; its under internet options>advanced then choose reset advanced settings and then restore. this will reset everything to defaults and also disable any toolbars etc in the process; as well as removing cookies and history data etc

 

finally; back to CCleaner; run the clean up and registry cleaner every month or so...its surprising how much it helps.

 

if you want to NUKE anything else then use this:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/20359976/Roguefix_3.008.bat

 

download to desktop; right click and choose "run as administrator" then let it go through its process. it will quickly tell you if you have odd settings or browser hijacking stuff and it will repair them for you.

 

finally; in all honesty your relying on third party piece of software to tell you whats good or bad with Secunia; there is nothing better than heading to the websites themselves and downloading updates direct. Adobe;Java; google and others are far better downloaded direct from the companies websites than relying on a third party application to do the work for you! you will get updates quicker and any relevant hotfixes quicker as well.

Edited May 23, 2013 by kirisute

[Steve Walker]

^^ I concur. Tracking cookies are a privacy concern but not a security risk.

 

Can you remember what the video site was?

[Steve Burke]

Thanks, both!

 

I run CCleaner every day and it seems to do a good job of getting rid of tracking cookies and keeping my registry in order.

 

The site I visited was www.derekryanmusic.com . As far as I know this is the official site.

[kirisute]

nothing untoward happening on the site that I can detect.

could be the youtube vids triggered a third party BHO file lurking on your pc previously. my list of clean ups will get rid of 99% of anything lurking about anyway

[Steve Burke]

Thanks, Kiri.

[Steve Walker]

Yes, looks pretty innocuous to me, just embedded YouTube videos.

[Steve Burke]

I wonder if I've found the problem?

 

By the way it wasn't Spybot I have running in the background as I posted earlier, it's Spyware Blaster.

 

Anyway, I ran Spybot and it picked up the Babylon Toolbar in Firebox (I run Firefox only to update the Wingham web site, that I haven't done for some time).

 

On trying to fix the problem it said it had run into an unexpected error.

 

"Cannot create file C:\Windows\wininit.ini" access is denied"

 

What next please, guys?

[Steve Walker]

Try running Spybot by right clicking it and choosing "run as administrator".

[kirisute]

Babylon toolbar should be sorted by malwarebytes.

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/746530

this might help also