Odd computer behavior - ideas?

In My Humble Opinion
1

My mother in law sent a frantic email today. Since yesterday, every time she tries to go to a couple of sites (almost any sites, really) in Internet Explorer, it either spins and never loads, or it flashes up a very strange-looking message about wanting to do a download.

For example, when going to WellsFargo.com, it displays this:
“do you want to download www_wellsfargo_com/ from www.wellsfargo.com?”

Note the filename has underscores instead of dots, and a slash at the end.

We tried saving the file (the intent being to virus-scan it and then PERHAPS open it in a text editor) and it wouldn’t save because of the slash. We removed the slash, and then it said “cannot save file”.

It’s throwing similar errors with other sites, such as an MSN site, and a games site she’s been playing at for years.

Everything works fine in Chrome.

I’m thinking virus - though they do have up to date Avast on their machines.

Any thoughts?

I’m going to remote into the computer again tomorrow or perhaps later tonight to noodle around some more.

2

Scan with Malwarebytes and Spybot, at the least - sounds like an IE hijack.

Is she patched up to date from the Windows Update site?

3

Dunno - that’s one of the things I’ll check on when I next hack into her computer (I was able to talk her through downloading and setting up TeamViewer).

As a side note: Apparently people REALLY lose computer skills when they get past a certain age. Once I got her set up using Chrome, I spent an hour on the phone with my nearly-80 father-in-law, helping him

  1. install TeamViewer
  2. follow the links from an email we sent him, to download PDFs of LibreOffice manuals, and
  3. copy files from a folder on his C drive to a folder on his flash drive.

OK, TeamViewer, I could understand - the few times he’s downloaded software on his own, it’s not turned out well.

But the other two tasks, ESPECIALLY the last one… :confused::confused::confused: