Suspected Dialer/Trojan Problems Please Help

[AnthonyG]

Hi,

Today when using my AOL Broadband my AOL internet connection cut out. And up popped the (non AOL) standard internet connecting box saying "You or a program have requested information from altavista.com" i clicked cancel then it would pop up a second later saying "You or a program have requested information from 6.4556545@freeserve.com" then more and more this kept going on a new popup box with a new place each time.

I have switched off my computer and restarted AOL and everything seems fine for the moment.

But i am panicking as to what was doing this, was this a dialer cutting in or is it a trojan, like i say i have broadband and no normal phone line connected to my computer but something was trying to connect to the internet (as usual my mcafee firewall didnt do nothing like saying some program on my computer wants internet connection" it did nothing).

is this just a normal occurance, but if so then what program was trying to connect to all these different addresses and why.

Thanks from a very worried Anthony.

[AnthonyG]

I tried to do a scan with Ewido and half way through the scan my monitor just abrubtly swiched off. The machine did not reboot or i did not seem to loose power to my monitor (as the light on the monitor would start flashing) but my screen just went completely back like it was switched off.

I am now very concerned indeed!.

Can someone help
What is wrong with my PC

[spy1]

Anthony1uk - Where exactly were you at when all this started happening? <g> Pete

[AnthonyG]

Actually i wasnt even using the computer My aol connection was on and internet was running and i was in the process of downloading something from limewire (some ebooks on linux).

But i was called away so i left everthing running my computer and AOL connection. i came back to the machine and the AOL was off with the AOL screen pop up was there saying there is a problem with your connection heres what to do.

But like i say on top of that AOL pop up box was my internal connecting internet box saying a program is trying to connect to Altavista.

Like i say i clicked cancel and that box just would keep popping up with a new address.

So i switched my machine off and rebooted and scanned with Ewido which for the first time ever seems to have caused a system crash half way through.

I am very worried as this sounds like a trojan, But i have mcafee enterprise and Trojan Hunter both running on active scan. Alongside MS antispyware active which I thought should stop changes to your computer.

Can someone advise me what is wrong.

[spy1]

Try doing some simple stuff like running a defrag, then doing a "Disk Management" run with "Automatically fix file system errors" and "Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors" check-marked.

Go into (if you haven't already done so) "Network Connections" and make sure there's nothing new there.

To the best of my knowledge, you can't get infected with a dialer (not in any meaningful way, anyhow) if you're not connected to a phone line somewhere/somehow. (Someone will undoubtedly correct me on that if I'm wrong).

Also, you really need to quit shutting off the computer when you're having a problem - a lot of malware sinks its' teeth way in when you do a re-start before fixing/blocking the problem.

Also check your "Power" settings to make sure your monitor didn't simply go into hibernation (you don't mention if you're using a screensaver or not - I don't).

And go into "Device Manager" and see if anything there is flagged.

Is it working correctly now? Did you shut down all other A/V A/T programs and try to run EWIDO again? Pete