How can I distinguish a malware infection from yet another bug in a Microsoft product?

Last week, for some odd reason, my IE-7 installation lost its ability to open a web page on the internet. When I tried to open a web page, IE-7 would just lock up and stop responding. On my external modem, the Rx/Tx lights just stayed dark, indicating no traffic. IE-7 worked fine for opening HTML files on the local hard drive.

I ran virus, spyware, and malware scans with 3 different products, and none of them found anything infected. I recovered from this problem by using XP’s System Restore function to restore to a checkpoint from the previous day.

I had not installed any new software, but I had Microsoft’s automatic updates enabled, and the title of the checkpoint that I restored from looks like it was something XP created before an update.

no lights on your modem means no traffic. opening a local file would work fine because it’s not an internet location, rather an html file on your drive that isnt reaching out to the web. sounds like a microsoft update screwed with your settings

One Response to “How can I distinguish a malware infection from yet another bug in a Microsoft product?”

  1. no lights on your modem means no traffic. opening a local file would work fine because it’s not an internet location, rather an html file on your drive that isnt reaching out to the web. sounds like a microsoft update screwed with your settings
    References :

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