Ok... after a slight diversion onto the x-box I'm back and everything appears to be back on track.
Kaspersky now reinstalled along with a new update!
The malware software I've been running for a while now ever since my laptop went in for a service last year and it was installed when I got it back. You're quite right in saying I don't venture on any unusual sites. Lately it's been strictly car forums, autotrader, pistonheads and facebook, oh and email also.
Only thing I can possibly put it down to is a piece of software called Audacity or something like that which was downloaded to edit an MP3 for the other half's phone. Apparently it was downloaded from Download.com but I've well and truly deleted it now.
Thanks again all for the advice.
To use a car analogy (oh noes)...
One day your car engine refuses to shut down.
The next day you start fiddling with various controls, the radio stops working, the lights stop working.
You continue fiddling, now the radio and lights and working and the engine shuts down.
Would you also declare that your car "appears back on track"?
Perhaps if I had charged you MB prices you would have listened to the advice more closely?
MalwareBytes Anti-Malware is free, and frankly detects and cures many problems that adaware and spybot do not even notice.
Rootkits are an increasingly common problem, and by their very nature are concealed, both from the common user, and from kaspersky (not my favourite AV software) and adaware / spybot / mbam, and ComboFix is free.
Facebook is CHOCK FULL of malware and drive-by downloads, even if you use Firefox with NoScript and AdBlock.
You also admit to downloading spurious software (phone/mp3) and running it.
I could bet you a lot of money (no bet really, no chance of losing) that your computer still has issues.
Going back to my MB analogy, you were offered a free after hours consultation from an MB specialist technician who offered to plug your car into the MB diagnostic computers for free (MBAM and ComboFix are free) and you preferred instead to reprise the jokes about if MS made cars by fiddling with the controls until the problem apparently went away.
Even if you were in a situation where your laptop was worth nothing to you, and where it contained zero useful data, you still should not be so dismissive.
A man was recently convicted, here in the UK, for "making" obscene material.
He did not actually make it, in the sense the layman means, rather he had a modern multi function mobile phone, and a friend sent him something, something humorous.
The act of receiving and then opening that file was enough for a prosecution and subsequent conviction.
Similarly, on a home computer, the act of receiving and then opening a file is sufficient basis for arrest, prosecution and subsequent conviction.
Downloading, receiving, and opening various files is
A TEXT BOOK DEFINITION OF WHAT MALWARE DOES, that's what a virus does, that's what a trojan does, that is what a rootkit does.
I'm not trying to chicken little anyone, but this stuff does happen, and when it does happen the personal consequences are awful in the extreme.
I don't propose to go on at any length, this is after all a car forum, but please listen, this is a subject that I know a lot about, this isn't 2003 and this isn't slammer, rootkits are the new viruses, there are files nowadays that you can scan with EVERY SINGLE VIRUS SOFTWARE on the planet, and they will all give the file a clean bill of health, and then you run the file and you are rooted, no longer "your" computer.
The whole virus / trojan / rootkit malware thing is an arms race, bit like MRSA and antibiotics, which would be bad enough, but we now also live in a society where there are *severe* civil and criminal penalties for certain forms of behaviour, which are replicated by malicious software.
The chances are you will just shrug, hell, it's only a bloody computer, and not even one running a nuclear reactor hey, it's not real life.
