My computer recently got infected with malware, and I had to perform a system restore to a time before the infection in order to get rid of it (various anti-malware software failed to remove it).
However, since I did this, any software that needs to connect to the internet to download updates hasn’t been able to do so. This includes my antivirus software (F-Secure) and Windows Update (I’m using Vista and I get error code 80070005). I am still able to browse the internet OK, it’s just the software updates that have stopped working.
I have tried the suggestions given here but nothing has worked - does anybody here have any other ideas?
My guess is that the virus is still there blocking your applications from updating, see if you can smoke the thing out with a different application than you were using before.
My guess is that something in the registry is borked. I experienced something a bit like this after a malware attack on my daughter’s computer a couple of years ago. After cleaning the malware, we could connect to the internet - iTunes worked - but no browser (tried IE, Firefox and Chrome) would start up, even after reinstalling it from a flash drive.
I had to do a factory reset, and so might you I fear, or else (what amounts to much the same) a full wipe and reinstall of Windows.
Epilogue - It’s been more than six months, during which I’ve simply made do without security software and the latest updates to my programs, but I feel that I should let you know how I got things working again, just in case anyone else runs into this problem.
It turned out that the malware had also hidden all of my files (but because I have the “show hidden files, folders and drives” option turned on, it took me a long time to realise this). Even then, I dismissed the fact that the files were hidden as an unimportant detail; after all, the files were still there, could still be accessed, and I could see them OK with “show hidden files” turned on, so what difference did it make except for slightly fainter icons? Eventually, as I created some new files, I started to find the mishmash of faint and regular icons to be slightly jarring, so I downloaded a program called unhide.exe (obtained from bleepingcomputer.com). After running and restarting, everything was fixed!:D:D:D
I had no idea that hiding a file made more than cosmetic changes.