[gui-talk] Can a computer go back in time by itself?

[Steve Jacobson]

Ken,

Just going back with a system restore isn't the answer, at least not without knowing what is wrong.  If your computer is infected, it is very likely that it was 
infected by a program that had been on your computer for a while waiting for its time to wake up.  What are you running for antivirus and for malware 
protection?  Before you assume that you are infected, it is possible that you are experiencing problems related to dialup.  How does your computer work 
when you are not connected to the internet?  If you are running a site with FLASH through dialup and if a couple of automatic updates kick off automatically 
downloading updates, it could really slow your network traffic to a crawl until all updates have been downloaded.  For example, Windows Update 
downloads stuff, there are FLASH player updates, Adobe has Acrobat updates, your virus protection periodically updates virus definitions, if you have 
separate antimalware programs they have definitions, and so forth.  If you haven't used your computer in a while, like for a couple of days, it is possible all of 
these could kick in at once.

Unfortunately, this kind of thing is getting to be a fact of life with computers.  You need to find someone there to check it out.  If it is not infected, just letting 
all of the updates run to completion might fix things, but if you have not had your computer off for a time or if you have already let the computer run and it 
doesn't get better then it is possible that you have an infection and you will probably need help to remove it.  If you are getting popups saying your computer 
is infected and that "clicking here will fix it," then you are infected for certain and you should definitely not click there.  I had one computer that was infected 
and I did manage to get rid of the problem, but the computer never really ran right.

This is probably not what you wanted to hear.  It also doesn't necessarily mean your current virus checker missed anything.  These things apparently can lay 
there doing nothing and may have gotten there before you started using your current virus checker.  Also, some virus checkers don't consider malware 
viruses.  Finally, with dialup, it is harder to be sure your virus checker is kept up-to-date.  A virus checker that has old definition files is going to be limited in 
its effectiveness.

Best regards,

Steve Jacobson

On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 08:12:48 EST, Kenlawrence124 at aol.com wrote:

>Hi folks Ken here still having my slow computer issue and on some fairly  
>basic operations.  Had this kooky idea.  I keep thinking there is  something 
>on the computer infecting it.  Game show network for example  takes almost 
>20 minutes to register for the live daily games on the channel each  
>afternoon.  When I log in I see the checkbox for the chat room but not the  forms to 
>enter your telephone number or the check box you must check to say you  are 
>over 18 or the clickable enter button which you must hit up to 10 times for 
> the entries you are allowed.  The site is flash heavy and I am on a dial 
>up  but this isn't that hard to do so I had a wacky idea.  Can a computer if  
>infected with a virus or malware revert back to a previous timeby itself?   
>The other thing that seems strange is I have NVDA here and I installed the  
>2010-1 version when I had the computer looked at for a clean up and general 
> fixing it.  To my shock I had the eloquents drivers on NVDA that the  
>previous version had on it.  Those were deleted and never coppied to the  new 
>version in fact, I had accidentally Deleted 2010-1 not realizing it had been  
>installed by our computer talk president.  I got a fresh copy and installed  
>it.  eloquents should have gone away when 2009 was uninstalled.  So if  the 
>computer has gone backwards on its own, How to I find it on system restore, 
> and how do I clear any restore points?  I can see where to make it go back 
> on there but that isn't what I want.  As I said think this thing is 
>already  going backwards.  Also will this change the results of an antivirus, anti 
> spyware, and malware bites scan?  Will microsoft security essentials be  
>able to now detect viruses and will it turn itself on?  I'm getting message  
>that says it's turned off.  Will this clean up my vertual memory and will  
>this also allow me to see the AOL system info to stop running processes and  
>maybe even run a rebuild adapter or will I have to uninstall AOL aol and 
>Skype,  thunder and NVDA and maybe even Firefox after clearing any restore 
>points I  find?  
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