I'm convinced my Vista computer has a virus but 2 programs (Norton and SpyBot) find nothing. What else to do?

ADawareSE free

Is that better? Or just another?

ADawareSE scans your computer looking for spyware and the like some think its good , i have tried it before until it fried and deleted itself

i also use malwarebytes

@sandystrachan Lol, what?
@SirBailey Sure, try to run AdAware or Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. If you have serious problems, but doesn’t find anything, I would personally consider reinstalling windows. As spybot and norton hasn’t found anything that might be your option. I hope you have your personal files on a separate partition. That is a good habit making it easier to reinstall.

But I thought, with some viruses, reinstalling windows won’t help. True?

But what makes you ‘convinced’ you have a virus? (more detail on the symptoms might help with the suggestions)

@SirBailey Not true. You format and reinstall. No virus escapes that. But Marcos is right. You should try to narrow down the problem. If it’s a serious problem that you can’t live with, reinstalling would be my option.

spybot is the best freeware, but i also use webroot products. webroot

what version of Norton do you have?

Norton Internet Security v 16.5;

Problems vary. Yesterday I kept getting message “You can’t start iTunes since someone else is running it”. I was NOT trying to run it!! I closed the iTunes programs with Task Manager yet they restarted. In addition, I’ve been getting error messages when I close/reopen Firefox saying it’s still running and Task Manager shows it IS running (I’ve read articles about the problem and know it can be other things. I’ve tried other solutions for THAT problem). A few times I click on a link someone sends me in Outlook and I get a message that it can’t find it. Other times, the same link works fine. The other day, switching from one user account to another crashed system.

Well, it’s not only viruses that fuck up systems, it’s also user behavior. Can’t tell you what to do. When I have been in similar situations, I have formatted and reinstalled.

Once I rule out everything, that’s what I’ll have to do. Thanks.

the itunes issue does not sound like a virus. the serious infections never warn you that you’ve lost control of your machine- and much less your resident software. one reason itunes may have a mind of its own is that you’ve chosen it as the default player for audio or video and it is desperately trying to play some non-itunes a/v for you. have you checked that?

Boooo hisssss on Norton. Download AVGFree, it’s never let me down. Also, AdAware, as someone mentioned above, is great. Every computer I own or work on gets these installed, along with Spybot Search & Destroy.

Reinstall. If you have suspicions, there’s no reason why not to wipe and start over clean. It’s very easy to do and if you use Windows it’s something that’s beneficial to get in the habit of doing. It also forces you to back up your information in the case where you don’t do so regularly.

@LC_Beta, I believe, in researching my Firefox problem, AV can cause similar problems. I’ll check.

Will probably go to TechGuy.com and run HijackThis.

@marcosthecuban, EXCELLENT POINT!!! I HAVE selected it to be the default player. Now if I can only remember if I was surfing at the time. I’ll try to reproduce the problem.

@LC_Beta the reason to not wipe and start over is that it’s a boat load of work! plus, you risk losing some data and settings (like useful cookies, etc). if i blew up my computer every time i suspected a virus….

(Was it LC who suggested it?)

But i agree. When you have a LOT of programs, and a LOT of settings, that’s the LAST thing I want to do. I’m trying to backup files from a bad laptop and there’s ALWAYS something I think about that I did NOT back up.

sorry, it wasn’t @LC_Beta. i’m doing 3 things at once and get a bit sloppy. sorry bout that LC.

Sure, it could he a hassle to reinstall. It’s not for me though, but I understand that. But if you try everything out and your final resort is the Bible and try to guess what Jesus would have done, then I would consider reinstalling.

Haha, I’ll take @oratio‘s heat.

@SirBailey – did you learn anything new about AVG?

I downloaded it and tried to install and it said I already had an anti-virus installed and I should uninstall that. Can’t do – I bought a three year license for Norton.

@marcosthecuban, I think you’re right on about the iTunes problem. Do you know what files I should NOT have it open if I want to be able to surf the net while another account uses iTunes?

Ouuuchhhh… Well, three years from now AVG will be waiting patiently. Sorry about that. One of the tech guys at work once told me that Norton puts out its own (harmless) viruses just so the antivirus program appears to be more effective. I wonder if that’s true.