I recently downloaded the service pack 2 and have had nothing but problems since. The techies tell me that zonealarm pushed me down on the desk and held me while microsoft gave it to me hard and deep.
my wife will fix it but she's pretty busy right now.
If you can download this free program and maybe it can find your spyware.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Sounds like your computer's been hi-jacked by malware. I'd say it would be worth at least a try of downloading ad-aware (by lavasoft) and spybot search and destroy, and then running them one after the other and see what they report and if your problem is solved. They're both free.
Also, I recommend you download firefox from mozilla.org- it may be that you can still use another browser without problems in the meantime (but I would try and fix whatever is wrong).
If its a bad malware infestation, you might have to download those programs on anthother computer and then transfer them over. Good luck. For the record, I'm not a computer expert (sounds like your wife might be), but those are good steps to take, anyway, for all computer users- and it might work. Again, good luck.
Sounds like you've got a ton of spyware and other malware on your system that are impeding performance.
Download and run free spyware removers like Spybot S&D and AdAware.
Once you've gotten rid of the Spyware, STOP USING INTERNET EXPLORER. Try these other free, more secure browsers:
whoops, I confused someone else's wife as the computer expert. also, spyware is a form of malware. it sound like you have malware, b/c it's messing with your homepage settings and maliciously sending you web pages you didn't request. it's probably spyware, too, and trying to collect any personal info it can and send it to someone else. Try what I suggested, and I'll be you can get it fixed.
If you have installed SP2, you may need to uninstall it, then do the adaware and spybot S&D programs to fix your problems, then reinstall SP2.
Yes it is true. If you downloaded the service pak 2 it is causing your problem. We had to take our computer in for total repair. They had to totally take everything out and reinstall..Nightmare.
One of the IT guys at work was telling me that he had one version of XP he was installing get probed and infected the first time he hooked up to the internet, while he was trying to download the security patches after a clean install.
I've run into several web pages at home on my Mac that try to install dialers and spyware. Since they're exe files they don't have any affect on my system, but I keep my beebers on full stune anytime I'm at a site I'm not familiar with, anyway.
Any luck? Or are you wondering how you're going to afford a new computer? Just thought I'd check back in with you.