Despite having up to date anti-virus software, I think I have a confuter virus.

As the title says, I think I have a virus on my confuter. I turn to you, the teeming millions to help me get rid of it.

It started with an error message saying that my system couldn’t go to standby because I needed to update the driver for my Intel Pro-Set Wireless, blah, de, blah thing.

So, I went to intel and atempted to download an updated driver. That particular problem hasn’t gone away, and now every time I start up my confuter I get a “Found New Hardware!” message, except I haven’t installed anything new, and in the device manager this new hardware is listed as “Other Programs - Unknown Device.” I’ve tried deleting it or uninstalling it, and it appears to keep propegating itself as it keeps showing up.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. FWIW, I have up to date virus software from my employer (it’s McAffee), and I’m running a scan on demand as we speak. My system also does a scan once a day and nothing has turned up. I did recently purchase “And Then There Were None” - a neato mystery game (which I finished) - however, it was just a couple of CDs and they’re no longer in the drive.

I updated to Windows 07 and I’m still getting both of the error messages.

Please help me. <sob>

I’ve never heard of a virus that manifests itself by identifying mysterious hardware for Windows all day. Sounds more like you need to install a driver for a local device, but Windows can’t get enough information to figure out what type of device it is. If I were you I’d start with motherboard chipset drivers.

In the interests of precision, have you installed all relevent updates from Windows updates? (Especially drivers?)
Also, instead of “Other Programs - Unknown Device.” do you mean “Other Devices - Unknown Device.”?
And instead of “Windows 07” do you mean… what do you mean?

That doesn’t sound like a virus - it sounds like a malfunctioning bit of hardware, or a broken driver.

When you right click the ‘unknown device’ and select ‘properties’ (in device manager), is there an option to roll back the driver anywhere?

Your problem is you’ve been installing anti-computer-virus software.

That does not work on confuturs. Indeed, I am suprised you were able to complete the install.

-FrL-

Heh - I guess you can see at least part of my problem (namely, I’m a bit of a confuter cone head).

As far as I’m aware windows is up to date (I searched for updates about a week ago).

I mean Other Devices - Unknown Device.

And I mean Microsoft Office 2007

So, keeping in mind that I tried to install updated drivers and apprarently it didn’t work, is there a particular place I should look for them? I went to microsoft, dell and intel to try to find the one for my pro set wireless, thought that I had installed it, but the problem isn’t solved.

Is confuter a term somewhere else on the globe, or am I being whooshed?

It is a term only in my head. A combo of confuse, confound and compute.

I just tried this and it says that no driver has every been installed for this hardware.

Holy Crap. I fixed it.

Well, thanks for everyone’s ideas. Mod, you could close this I guess.