Glad it solved it, I frequently deal with problems no spyware cleaner product will recognize... if you get one of those, you can try HijackThis, software capable of detecting and removing things that use various hijack methods rather than being hardcoded for various hijackers. It can remove legit software too so be careful where you aim it.

IE doesn't stink.

Check it out: Firefox Myth

Internet Explorer itself is the virus you mean.....

There are lots of other Browsers which are much better....

Regarding the point of Web-Browsing Microsoft really is old-fashioned!

Internet Explorer has too many secure holes and even doesn't support tabbed browsing...


Try Firefox or Opera and ban Internet Explorer (or directly Microsoft) of your hard disk and your virus-problem will be fixed!


Greets,

Jan

I need help...

I was trying to fix my friend's laptop. the problem with the laptop was that the windows was starting up slowly compared to the earlier.

I thought about the above "Windows Defender".. I downloaded and installed it on the laptop. I made a scan on the laptop. It found one malicious thing (file I guess).. I clicked on the "remove it" button, then restarted the laptop.

But this time the windows did not start up at all. what it does is, that I log in to one of the user's account and that's it. the account is not loading completely, it just freezes, doesn't let me do anything. the icons in the taskbar (bottom right corner of the screen, right next to time) do not even show up, and it just freezes.

When I open the task manager it shows only one application, which is called "Maximizer startup" and its status is "not responding"...

what is going on? help...

Sometimes antivirus software is installed to scan you hard drive etc at startup. Often, this causes a machine to lock up. When you installed the A/V software, I may have installed itself (or asked you and you said yes) to scan at boot time.

I don't recommend this, as I have seen many Windows boxes lock up when they have viral problems and the machine boots with A/V software.

thanks for your prompt reply neo.

It looks like the windows is now working again, but the start up is still slow. so, do you have a suggestion in order to speed up the windows startup? (or should I open a new thread for that?)

There are many reports that show Firefox having more security vulnerabilities than IE. Some of the "religous posts" about browers in this thread are simply wrong.

Here is a link to a blog post that show a graphic of both Firefox and IE critical vulnerabilities in 2006. You can see that Firefox's critical vulnerabilities was almost twice that of IE!