Is My computer infected?

It is infected. Virus And Spyware. Use:

-"SpyBot Search & Destroy"
-"Ad-Aware 2007"
-All the Antivirus you can find ("McAffe", "BitDefender", "Nod32", "AVS", "AVG", ...) (ONE AT A TIME, isntall one, un-isntall it, install the other)

Use Window$ System Restore to restore the files at a previous state.

If it doesn't work use "Hijack This", post the info that you find at a virus treating related forum, so that they can help you.

If nothing of this works you will have to re-install Window$. Use a Knopix liveCD to recover your data to a cd or pen or what you want to use, and, reinstall Winblows from scratch from the install cd.

For preventing this to happen again I recommend:

-An Anti-virus ("Bit-Defender 10 Free", for example). It has to make an update and a smart virus scan at your system start, and a deep virus scan at least once a week.

-A Firewall ("COMODO Firewall", for example), that manage the programs traffic too (Winblow$' firewall doesn't do).

-Using a Normal login account. Many people uses the Administrator account to login, don't use it. Create a custom account without "root" privileges for everyday use.

-Use Linux . Having a family that uses the computer is not a reason. If they need to use the computer, then install "Linspire" (paid) or "Freespire" (free), that already come set up and are similar to Microshaft Winblow$, install that "thing (I'm talking of Micro$haft Winblow$)" to a virtual PC trough VMware Server and install Wine. That way, everyone can use it.

Hope to have helped.
 
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The Blogger of Portimão or O Blogger de Portimão. Free your mind...

XPDE is a DE that mimics XP's default interface including the inferior start menu!

As 4 a firewall I recommend ZoneAlarm's free firewall.

And don't use VMWare server as I heard Micro$*** Winblow$ does not work well in VMWare plus I heard VMWare is a hassle to set up.

Use Virtual Box instead, it is free, and Winblow$ runs more smoothly in there, plus it performs alot better than VMWare.

Also haven't you ever heard of Dual-booting?

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As all of ya should know Micro$oft is the Evil Empire, and Windows (a.k.a. Winblows or Windoze) is their greatest general, so please make a difference and install Linux or FreeBSD on yer Windows comp.

It would be interesting to learn whether you figured out (and removed) what was slowing things down.

When my computer slows down a lot, it is usually that it has run out of RAM and is using "virtual memory" (stored on the hard drive, which is very slow). Sometimes the solution is to stop some programs, but other times I must reboot.

I know that there are a lot of programs that set up "services", programs that run all the time on your machine in the background, even when you aren't using them. It may be that something you installed recently is running in a way that pushed your machine from using RAM efficiently, to using so much RAM that it has to use virtual memory more and more.

If you want to start figuring this stuff out, a place to start is Sysinternals Process Explorer. (Google for it.) It is a replacement for Task Manager. It also gets your foot in the door at Sysinternals and other sites to find some other programs that help keep your computer tuned up. The next one I'd look at is Autoruns from the same place. If you suspect hard core malware running on your machine, they have a rootkit detector utility that might help.

Using several of the free AV and spyware scanners is a good thing, since what one misses might be picked up by another. The spyware scanners, though, frequently raise alarms about some things that are relatively harmless -- like cookies or registry entries that indicate you visited a site or ran some software in the past, but don't necessarily indicate what is causing the problem now. So it can take some detective work using those clues to figure out what is going on.