whats wrong with my activeX?

Factual Questions
1

whats wrong with my computer? i can’t run my Norton anti virus. symantec told me to uninstall and reinstall. I’ve done that 3 times now. now when i reinstall, anti virus doesn’t even show up as an option on Norton system works. i cant run a on line anti virus program because my computer is telling me that my security settings are set to high and i cant use activeX. how can they be set to high. there on low. i can’t download any updates from Microsoft ether because of the same reason. i can’t even get into my msn page when i click on the little butterfly icon (i do though seem to be able to connect and surf the Internet by clicking the butterfly and letting it try 3 or 4 times and then clicking the blue e IEXPLORE icon). whats going on. do i have a virus? is there just something screwed up with my settings? please help.

this is the message i get from Microsoft update:

The Windows Update software did not update successfully. Below are some suggestions to help you proceed:
You may have clicked No when prompted to accept the Trust Certificate. To allow the Windows Update site software to install, click Yes when presented with the Security Warning dialog box.
Your Internet Explorer security settings may be set too high. To install the updated software and access Windows Update, Internet Explorer security must be set to medium or lower, and active scripting and the download and initialization of ActiveX controls must be enabled.

Note These are the default settings for Internet Explorer. For more information about Internet Explorer security and instructions on how to change your security settings, read Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) Article Q174360.

i have a dell computer with windows xp (updated from me). I’m using Norton system works 2003 (updated from 2001). i have both adaware6 and spybot that i use on a regular basis. i have a small collection of songs and videos that i share with friends on my computer also. this takes up most of my memory (i have 3 out of 18 gigs left).

2

i forgot to add that i tried to restore my computer to a prior point, but it just tells me that it was unsucsesful and that nothing has been changed.

3
      • If you cannot run antivirus software, it’s probable that a virus has already infected your system and is preventing that. It is a common symptom of spyware and viruses now–they disable the very programs that would attempt to find and remove them. And all that WinXP “system restore” stuff is not any guarantee of anything, because spyware and viruses will infect that, too–so that they get “restored” when anything else does.
  • I would advise that you get a friend who has a computer that has a native virus-scanning software already installed and updated, and attach your hard drive as a slave, and let that computer scan your hard drive and remove any virus files it finds, no matter what. You could of course reformat and reinstall your whole OS and all your software, but that -might- not be necessary; when you reinstall the HD into your computer and restart, it -might- be able to restart on its own. You will need someone who also has a computer running NTFS, preferrably another running WinXP.
    ~
4

I find that Norton SUCKS

Besides that, some viruses target it and can disable it and block a reinstall.

Try this:

This is a lesser known but quite good program. It catches a lot of the stuff that Norton doesn’t. for home use, it is free.

5

Norton does tend to get buggy in the uninstall/reinstall process. If the AV program isn’t showing up, you might need to manually remove the references the installation originally created (note - you have uninstalled the SystemWorks package, right? Not just the AV separately?).

At any rate, Symantec has instructions for manual removal here, here and here. (different instructions for different installations). Apparently, they have a removal tool (Rnav2003.exe), but it doesn’t work if the AV program was installed as part of the SystemWorks package.

I’ve been through the Norton uninstall/reinstall problem before (though it wasn’t virus-related), and the manual removal instructions helped. If you’re unable to remove SystemWorks and AV through your Control Panel’s Add/Remove function, it’s worth a shot to follow Symantec’s steps.

6

i uninstalled norton and installed anitvir (from link above) and ran twice. it found a .dll file that belongs to a virus named vbs.newlove (or something like that). i deleated it but i’m still having trouble with my activeX. i still can’t use window update or any online virus scans. do i have some unknown virus that totaly screwed my activeX or is it something else? can anyone help me pleeeeeaaaassssseeeee?

7
      • If you find a virus file, then what you (try to) do is enter it in Google as “(the-virus-filename) removal tool”, and hopefully you find a free removal tool somewhere to get rid of it:
        http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=vbs.newlove+removal+tool&btnG=Search
        … -the second link in that search is a free boot-disk removal tool, but the problem in this case is that the worm does its damage right away, erasing all the unused files on the computer:
        http://www.antivirus-online.de/english/news000504.php
        Go to your computer’s “files and folders” options and see if you can set it to show all file extensions, and then look around in any of your own files that you yourself made. If they still have their usual FULL extensions, then run the removal tool and cross your fingers. If you see that all of them have .vbs extensions on their ends, then it is too late for your PC already. Removing the worm won’t restore all the files it deleted.
        Ponder the true cost of “free online virus scanners” while reinstalling everything, grasshopper.
        ~