Very worried

A few minutes ago I was typing out a rather long post on ats when my comp just stopped responding. No mouse, no keyboard, no ctrl+alt+dlt, no nothing. After a manual restart, firefox refused to start a few times, but now I've got it working, I cannot access a site I got onto this morning.

I get:

The page isn't redirecting properly

Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete.

* This problem can sometimes be caused by disabling or refusing to accept
cookies.

After allowing all cookies for anything, still nilch. I've got Ad-Aware and AVG sniffing around my C drive, but they havent found anything.

Is it possible that I've downloaded some sort of virus or whatnot?

I'm really very worried. Ive got a lot of un-backed up stuff on this comp that I would hate to lose. Any ideas??

Check your event viewer and see what exactly happened. Then, try a Panda scan. a lot of viruses alter the definitions of your personal antivirus programs as to not be detected.

Thanks for the reply, but what's an event viewer?

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
I'm really very worried. Ive got a lot of un-backed up stuff on this comp that I would hate to lose. Any ideas??

Make a back-up first, if possible.

I suppose you are using some version of Windows.

Then, go to SysInternals and download Autoruns.

This program can be executed directly from the zip file or you can extract Autoruns.exe to any place.

When you run it, it will show you all the programs that are loaded at start-up.

In the lists search for any program that does not have the name of the company who made it in the "Publisher" columns.

You may have some programs that do not have the "Publisher" name, but you can get some clue about them by looking in the "Image Path" column.

Originally posted by watch_the_rocks
Thanks for the reply, but what's an event viewer?

Right-click on "My computer" and choose "Manage".

In the program that appears, in the left pane, one of the first icons should be the "Event viewer".

It's normal when the site which you're trying to access is not working properly. What is the address? So we can test it...

[edit on 2006-8-11 by zer69]

Never mind. The site works now. I guess I was just over-reacting.
But jeez, I did get a scare there . . .

OK.

But remember to back-up, better safe than sorry.