PC help needed, please!

[mildwin]

Since Saturday we have been unable to access some websites: some take ages to load, others (mainly secure) one do not load at all. Contacted AOL, they say a number of AOL members have been affected & that it is a fault their end. Fine, I thought! But have noticed unusual firewall activity since this issue started. Now, I am not up to speed with firewall, etc. But we have Norton 360 All-in-one security, up to date definitions, etc. The activity says severity is just 'info' and says things have been detected. Lots of things 'preparing to access the internet' even before we have turned on router or broadband. Any ideas would be much appreciated as we are wondering if the 2 problems are linked, firewall activity & AOL problems, if so how? And whether we should be concerned with the firewall activity we are seeing.
Thank you

[Mustardmit]

Norton? ugh, AOL? UGH !
My advice, ditch AOL -they're notorious for being unreliable and invasive, just go for Virginmedia or BT. Norton is a massive pain in the a*se -it effectively IS a virus IMO. Ditch that too although you may have some trouble removing it -which says a lot. I assume you're running Windows XP or Vista (?) in which case, they have a perfectly effective firewall built in as long as you keep your updates regular. AVG Free has a proven track record of being a reliable un-invasive anti-virus program, it just gets on with it in the background and doesn't clog up your system.

[hc4361]

In the first instance switch everything off at the socket - computers, printers, modem and router (if seperate).
Turn everything back on in the right order, leaving a least a minute between each one.
Modem
Router
Computers

[mildwin]

Thanks, although I appreciate what you say mustardmit I have been with AOL for years and never had any problems, until now of course.
hc4361, we always turn things off at the socket but have tried turning things on in order but still the same thing happens. Could the problem that AOL say is their end, cause unusual firewall activity; lots of 'an instance of c;\program files etc etc is preparing to access the internet'. Is it likely to be a virus or something in the startup menu? If so, how do you remove it if Norton isn't finding it? I have run a full system scan in safe mode and again Norton found nothing.

[Jumbuck]

I'm not discounting the possibility of a virus but a lot of programs that run in the background do look for updates and will thus be wanting to access the internet. That may explain some of those messages (but probably not all).

[ChuckFickens]

" c;\program files etc etc"

Think it might help if you'd expand a little on the etc etc. it is relevant.

Norton's anti-spyware isn't that great, i'd download malwarebytes and run a full system scan with that and see if that finds anything (it won't cause any problems running it as well as norton)

http://download.cnet....72&subj=dl&tag=button

[Jumbuck]

Could the reporting level of the firewall have changed? Since all these messages are just info, might it be that the reporting level used to be such that they weren't of sufficient severity to be reported, and that whatever happened last weekend has changed the setting? Just a thought...

[mildwin]

I was wondering that Jumbuck although I wouldn't know how to find out that info.

chuckfickens - sorry, there are a lot of c:\program files firewall activity but a couple of them are - common files\aol\acs\aoldial.exe, microsoft\search enhancement pack\seaport\seaport.exe, then we have some for dell support centre, itunes, bonjour, norton, system 32 wininit, there are a lot of them. Then we have things like Ip address has disappeared from adaptor Realtek, then blocked communication, connected to shared network, so there is lot of activity that never used to be detected or shown on the firewall activity.

[fiesata]

Sounds like your DNS servers could be the problem - you can use open DNS for free try these to se if this is the problem

http://www.opendns.com/start/