all downloads are viruses

First, where are you downloading these manuals from? Is the virus warning coming from your anti-virus software, or from a browser warning?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/help-protect-yourself-ie-10?ocid=IE10_protect_viruses#firstTabControl=tab1

Any and all downloads are flagged as containing a virus. There is a "Learn More" link after the flag which goes to the above link, which I believe is a legit site.

Went to change settings in Windows firewall and got error message.
Maybe Windows firewall is throwing out all downloads as virus?
Maybe virus in PC, but does show up.

Reinstall Win7?

Beaker wrote:

Reinstall Win7?

I wouldn't go that far. Would be like using dynamite in your house to get rid of a mouse. Could just be a security setting is set too high or corrupt app files. What browser and AV software are you using? Is the browser IE? If so, see if your downloads work with Firefox and let us know what happens?

Will try Google chrome. Pretty sure its an IE problem.

Leaving for beach in the morning!!

I have been in the PC support end of things at a large insurance company for the last 25 years.

I'd suggest you first go to www.superantispyware.com and download\install the free version. Do a COMPLETE scan. This is one of the best antispyware programs around! It has found "bad" that both McAffee and Norton can't. The free version will have to be run manually, about avery other day.

For an antivirus program, if you don't already have one would be AVG Free Antivirus. You can download/install the free trial version at;
http://www.avg.com/us-en/trustav_bt_ppc?ECID=ad:go:se:US-EN-SCH_AVG-Free&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=avg%20free&utm_content=&utm_campaign=US-EN-SCH_AVG%20Free&gclid=CIOVsaiMjLgCFcOh4AodIV0AJw

I strongly suggest others give it a try as well.

Thanks

sue.t wrote:
Years ago I downloaded what I thought was a pdf file, a manual for something or other. I saved the file to my hard drive and after I clicked on the pdf file to open it, a trojan took over my computer and my security software was shut down.

Thus I learned, even though it appears to be a pdf file, it can be an executable and it can do much damage to your system.

BTW, the security software that didn't detect this intrusion and let itself be shut down was Microsoft Security Essentials.

Years ago, this was a security hole with Adobe Reader, a patch was issued. You should be using Adobe Reader 9.0 or higher, make sure you have all the security updates..

As far as the OPs issue, I would say that they have malware that most likely has a virus payload to boot.

The usual fixes apply here, run malwarebytes, Ad-Aware, and antivirus.

I apparently have the Win32downloader.gen virus. Cannot download any files in IE or Chrome. If anyone has had this, help would be appreciated.

Beaker wrote:
I apparently have the Win32downloader.gen virus. Cannot download any files in IE or Chrome. If anyone has had this, help would be appreciated.

Looks like you got yourself a rather difficult to remove virus.

You can take a look at MICROSOFT WEBSITE for some potential ideas.

Had a customer with the exact same problem...How i fixed it was..from another pc, i downloaded the mozilla installer program onto a thumb drive and ran it on the infected pc. (can't download anything thru IE) That fixed the problem and now he's a happy user of mozilla firefox

rovinredneck wrote:
Had a customer with the exact same problem...How i fixed it was..from another pc, i downloaded the mozilla installer program onto a thumb drive and ran it on the infected pc. (can't download anything thru IE) That fixed the problem and now he's a happy user of mozilla firefox

:? :h

Wouldn't you want to remove the virus first?

Installing a new browser on a infected PC without removing the infection just doesn't make sense :S

With many hard to remove virus's and malware, you often need to use a second PC to download antivirus and anti malware removal software to a USB flash drive (often needing to rename the exe file since most virus's will automatically BLOCK any attempt to install tools that can remove it).

Then start the infected PC in safe mode and then install antivirus and anti malware software.

Then start the scans and hope they clean it up.

Some virus's however infect critical areas of the boot drive, these are difficult to remove automatically. While I didn't research this virus closely from what I did read it is not easy to remove.