-- Posted by Parody at 2:18 pm on April 23, 2008 For some reason, a few nights ago FireFox let a pop-up ad slide that installed a rogue anti-virus on my computer (it really only shows false positives so you'll buy the actual product - it's a dud and shouldn't download anything else on your computer, as far as I've read. It's just REALLY FREAKING ANNOYING). So, I search Google and find a page to manually remove it since I have dial-up and thus no time to download virus/spyware/malware removers, and I take it off of my computer. Everything's fine until the next day, when I try to do a google search for some anti-virus/spyware/malware thing that I remembered, and google wouldn't load. It just wouldn't. Not a single search engine would go. Every other website worked perfectly, so I thought it might have had something to do with firefox. So I do a google search in IE and minimize the window. It took two or more hours to load one google page. Does anyone know what the hell is wrong with my computer? -- Posted by xxsammxx at 2:20 pm on April 23, 2008 Number one you have microsoft and number 2 it is dial-up when we first got internet it was dialup and the same! -- Posted by Parody at 2:29 pm on April 23, 2008 Ah, no. Obviously, you are not understanding the situation at hand. Microsoft has always worked perfectly fine with my Internet browsers. My dial-up, though slow, does not take two fucking hours to load a page. Something is wrong with my computer and your comment was completely useless. -- Posted by Poker Shark at 2:39 pm on April 23, 2008 My dad has one of those viruses. Antispy and virusranger or something. They look like antivirus programs but they show fake results and try and get you to buy the full version. It hijacks your computer and browser. Seems impossible to get rid of :( -- Posted by Parody at 2:44 pm on April 23, 2008 You can get rid of them manually, but its a crapload to do. I wish I could google an answer for this, but I can't. 8( IRONIC VIRUS. -- Posted by nikki at 3:00 pm on April 23, 2008 I think your best bet would be to get a proper anti-virus, like Norton. It might be expensive and take forever to download on a dial-up connection, but it's worth it in the end. -- Posted by Parody at 3:03 pm on April 23, 2008 Well, that's the thing. I would certainly use Norton, but I'm not the one who pays for these things. My mom refuses to pay for anymore anti-virus things for whatever reason. She chose not to renew it. -- Posted by climber783 at 10:01 pm on April 23, 2008 Then use a free anti-virus.  There's lots of them out there.  They work wonders.  Try Avast anti-virus, or AVG.  They're both easy to use.  Entirely free.   -- Posted by nikki at 2:39 am on April 24, 2008 Tell your mum you have a virus. If it spreads, it could affect everything you have on your computer, not just the search engine thing. -- Posted by Parody at 12:48 pm on April 25, 2008 Quote: from climber783 at 10:01 pm on April 23, 2008 Then use a free anti-virus.  There's lots of them out there.  They work wonders.  Try Avast anti-virus, or AVG.  They're both easy to use.  Entirely free.   The funny thing is that I have AVG and it doesn't help, even after 5 hours of updates. :u [recently got my laptop a new motherboard, since the little metal thing for the adapter broke] Plus, since it takes hours to load google, I can't really SEARCH google for free anti-virus programs. :/ -- Posted by climber783 at 5:15 pm on April 25, 2008 Then, either uninstall and reinstall AVG, or try a different one.  www.avast.com is a possibility. Are you sure it isn't a browser problem?  Have you tried uninstalling/reinstalling firefox? Otherwise, it may be time for an operating system restore/reinstall.