I am having trouble installing Windows updates. A box
pops up telling me some files have been altered and asks
if I want to overwrite them. I click yes and a few
moments later another box comes up and tells me there was
an error when the setup attempted to download files from
the internet and a connection with the server could not
be established. If I click on retry, I always get the
message back.

I do have a cable internet connection and Norton
antivirus. My computer did have a hacker a while back and
I suspect he made some changes. I also can not use the
system restore feature and I cannot get updates for
Spybot Search and Destroy.

Does anyone know what I need to do? I'd really appreciate
help anyone could give me.

Thanks!

You have the CoolWebSearch hosts/hijacker installed. Download and run
CWShredder (note: only use it once, it is constantly being updated for
newer variants):
http://216.180.233.153/~merijn/files/CWShredder.exe

This from Tom Coyote :
" Get this program called Hosts File Reader. It will show the hosts file
wherever it is located.

http://members.shaw.ca/techcd/VB_Pro...FileReader.exe

Run the program and look at the bottom part of the window, if an entry
is there, double click it.
You should see the contents of that file appear in the top part of the
window. You can then change, delete, append, do what you want to the
file using that utility. "

Remove any reference to http://safer-networking.org (Spybot S&D)
or, visit this page and download the .reg files that will remove the
blocking of Spybot sites and functions. I've included this in case you
can reach this URL :

http://www.safer-networking.org/minifiles.html

For your Windows Update issue, advise you to disable Norton AV prior to
accessing the update site; open Norton, click Options, disable
Auto-protect so that it's no longer loaded AND not loading at startup.
Click the Script blocking option ... disable it. Reenable both after the
installation of updates and any subsequent rebooting.


MowGreen [MVP]
*-343-* Never Forgotten


d_stoeser@hotmail.com wrote: