Yesterday while using my desk top, a Dell Inspiron with Vista Home Premium and AVG anti virus a warning came up, followed by a screen asking if I wanted it to be dealt with. As I've had the same before and AVG has always dealt with it OK I clicked Yes and a screen for something called Anti-virus Action appeared wanting me to buy their product. Since then I've had nothing but trouble, screens coming up saying the computer is infected and files are corrupt etc, I can't connect to the net, I can't even run a system restore.can somebody please explain to me how to get back to normal,preferably in nice simple terms, do I have to take it to an expert or is it totally Donald Ducked and on it's road to the dust bin. I'm on my way out for a while so I won't be able to reply for a while but any help and advice would be gratefully accepted.
Thanks everybody for your replies, I've not got time to try anything at the moment as we've just had a phone call from the sister in law to say she's going to drop in for a couple of hours, will let you know how I get on tomorrow
I have warned several times here about AVG Free not catching everything.
You could try running a FULL Scan from a Disc like Norton on a boot. Switch OFF System Restore FIRST. Then try.
TBH .. You may need To run 'RKill' and 'Combofix' after S.R. is turned off. You will need these added by USB pen drive, once they are downloaded from another PC.
I had something similar. I couldn't even run a "system restore" in the usual way. As I recall, I switched off, then hit F8 as the system rebooted. That took me to a screen which allowed me a "system restore" prior to the main Windows system starting up. That cleared it for me. (Running Vista Home Basic). Good luck.
BTW, I have all pop-ups blocked, and NEVER let one through, unless I'm absolutely sure of what it is.