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General discussion

Corrupted Navigation bar , Internet access and more - help!

Dec 16, 2010 2:15AM PST

Hi there, SO hope you can help as I am now stuck....

I have an Acer Aspire 6930 running on Windows Vista home premium. Internet is DSL cable.

Until yesterday I had a year and 7 months trouble free. But yesterday, after turning the machine on, the browser (mozilla, then IE) continues to load, doesnt time out or load any page. The Network conx shows no connection problems, and my ISP says the same. I can even load and use skype, and my AV updates, but I cannot open a page in a browser. I have re-installed Mozilla - no change.
The really weird thing is that my navigation bar no longer shows the network conx, or speakers, and if I try to enable them I cant as they are in light grey (cant be selected).
Also, I tunes wont load either.
I have run full system scans and installed Malware bytes - all clean.
I had not installed anything new, or downloaded anything prior to this issue.

Please would someone kindly help or at least point me in the right direction.
Many thanks in advance.

Discussion is locked

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This one is not uncommon when Norton is installed.
Dec 16, 2010 4:44AM PST

It's an oddity and worth discussing why Symantec shut down some but not all connections and didn't pop up "expired, I'm blocking you" messages.
Bob

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Corrupted Navigation bar , Internet access and more - help!
Dec 16, 2010 2:02PM PST

Thanks Bob,
But I have never had Symantec installed on my machine......
Any ideas why these oddities occured and more importantly, what I can do to rectify the problems?
Thanks a mil,
Abster

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Shared the most common reason I run into.
Dec 17, 2010 12:42AM PST

And it was shared in hope of more clues. Good to read you use MBAM, now try the rest that Grif suggests but first, why do you suspect malware? Has someone been running torrents or visiting bad web sites?

Grif's advice is at http://forums.cnet.com/7723-6122_102-311989.html#2880351

My thoughts about IE had me years ago use anything else. You did say Chrome was broken too which is a common sign something has meddled with a firewall or expired. Your post didn't reveal what paid protection software you use so let's hear more and see what Grif's advice turns up.

Bob