Blue circle w 4o'clock face means damaged disk repaired, not virus??

I have moved this to the Virus & Spyware forum.

Hi Kate, and welcome to the forum.

Just to clarify a few things.

- Having more than one anti-virus installed is a bad idea, even if you think you are using only one of them, and can actually degrade your real-time protection. And switching AVs is not a trivial process. So I have to ask if you first uninstalled McAfee completely (including removing remnants using the McAfee uninstall tool available from their website) prior to installing Kaspersky.

- Can you quote the exact text of any alerts, or detections by your AV currently. Include the exact name of any exe file detected.

- Which version of Windows are you using (Win7 or Win 8.1 etc) are you using? Do you have Windows automatic security updates enabled?

When we have this info, we can better advise you on where to go for virus or malware removal, if necessary. Be advised that one-on-one virus removal instructions are no longer offered at Dell. There are certainly forums dedicated to this, where free advice is available from experts.

Viruses are the real area I need to understand, so I think this is/was the right area to redirect me to because it is new to me. 

Thx so much for idea re: UNINSTALL of McAfee.  The techs at Staples are helpful & get the right idea but not much depth and may make that mistake.

But I think I am covered except for EXTREMELY tedious advertising attacks, which confused me into thinking I had a virus but probably Mozilla / Windows / Dell have sold out and simple allow ads that continually open new tabs with key stroke capture.  Or the floating ads on this forum web page.

Dell had ONE TIME ONLY viruses detection from their tech in addition to hardware survey [F12] remotely.

This ad  is new to me since I was using a library computer after my used computer died from lightening / capacitance on an old house electrical line

The other factor is my stupidity -- I took the computer into the local dealer who determined that the Blue Clock Face symbol was from Dell, indicating that the file was backed-up.  I just bought Dell Backup and Recover PREMIUM so I didn't get it because I also just jarred the computer, plus the on-off switch jams and I didn't wait the decent interval for turning it back on and off, so in the bad old days these things meant possible disk damage.  Everything seems to check out and hopefully it will be like being a new automobile driver, after a couple of avoidable accidents I'll "get it".

Thanks for pointing me to this forum and I will be a bit more patient with the computer and you guys and myself, now that I have determined I didn't kill my computer.

Regards, Kate

When the Dell Technician ran the Malware, Antivirus programs -- several scans of exe, dll, etc.--  programs there wasn't anything detected.  When he the Professional version of SUPERAntispyware it detected "junkware" and cookies.  There is a borderline program still on the computer that was also detected again by SUPERAntispyware called WSE_Astromenda, which Kaspersky Lab my main program has a forum discussion about that is still classified and another web page said is malware and hard to get rid of.  I am running the trial version and intend to buy it.

BTW, I haven't UNINSTALLED McAfee but I am definitely not running it, checking the Task Manager and it is definitely"off", from help by my local PC guy regarding the Start page.  And SUPERAntispyware intends to be a complimentary program and is easy to turn off and only run manually.  So, only Kaspersky is run in the background, e.g. check new USBs.

There is also the keystroke capture I hate and is still here, which was new and at first confused me into thinking it was a virus. The underlying mechanism still seems to be the same as cookie capture in terms of ad display, and it may be legal to be so annoying but I would still like to know if other people are able to get rid of it.

Thanks, Kate
k2quill

Hi again Kate:

If I understand you correctly, you have at least a couple of annoyances that still are present:

1) Ad ware
2) a key logger
3) possibly other junk ware (Astromenda, which I believe is a browser hijacker).

A few suggestions:

1) Do not use multiple sources (Dell Tech, Staples Tech, the "local guy", etc) to remove these pests. You will get conflicting advice that will hinder the process. I strongly suggest that if you wish to remove these, you should use an accredited expert from a reliable malware removal website. We can refer you to such a free site. I realise this requires a leap of faith, but I speak from experience.

2) Do uninstall McAfee, even if it is not "running". Kaspersky is a reliable AV, and IMO better than McAfee. I'm still not satisfied that the 2 AVs might not conflict.

3) By selecting your own reply as a "solution", when indeed it did not solve your problems, you effectively told this board your problem was solved. You are unlikely to get further help here, under these circumstances. I have taken the liberty of removing this selection, so that others might try to assist you.

Let us know if we can be of further assistance. Most folks who post replies here have considerable experience, and are not Dell employees, just volunteers (myself included).