Apps Unable to Access Internet On Vista

[owensdj]

All apps other than IE are unable to access the Internet on this Vista laptop. Vista was "infected" with that Personal Antivirus malware that tries to trick you into thinking you're infected with a virus so you'll buy the software. I was able to get rid of Personal Antivirus using Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.

Anti-Malware was unable to update. The same was true when I installed AVG Antivirus. AVG scanned un-updated but was unable to find any infections.

What could be blocking all these apps from accessing the Internet? I tried turning off the Vista firewall.

 

[ViRGE]

Check your hosts file. That may have a number of redirections in them to block AV software.

If the Hosts file checks out though, then you're probably still infected. At that point a wipe & reinstall would likely be a more effective solution.

 

[owensdj]

ViRGE, thanks for the reply. I checked the hosts file but it has the normal two entries. Any other ideas?

 

[owensdj]

I was able to solve this problem. There was something left over from Symantec's software that was blocking access. I got a Symantec software removal tool from Symantec's site and that fixed it.