I am sorry. That is so frustrating, isn't it? Starting yesterday morning, every time I try to open my email I end up at a site that I have a toolbar for. I am NOT clicking on the toolbar but typing n the email site and still I get directed to the wrong place. I also cannot get rid of the toolbar - have tried every trick and direction I can find. I finally sent a message to the co that has the toolbar to get them to tell me how to get rid of it.
This makes me wonder if something happened on the net yesterday that is doing strange things to lots of people. I have never had anything like this happen before, and haven't been to any sites I don't normally go to. My antivirus and antispyware/malware programs are up to date nad scanning normally with no signs of trouble, so it seems strange to me.
Susie, what you are describing to me is a symptom of a malware, probably a spyware.
It's not because your security software said that it's fine that it is really fine. You have probably caught a malware which is not into their scanning repertory (a bit like if you were catching a new virus or a new bacteria, and your body were not recognizing it as a virus or bacteria).
So if I were you, I would switch to Linux.
You can still have your photos, Powerpoints, Word documents and such. But if you catch a malware (virus, trojan, spyware), it won't be active and won't create the problems you have on your computer now.
It's much easier to use, even for the most technophobic person in the world !! (I switched a GP's computer on Linux because he had no money to buy a new one, and after the first few weeks with the heavoc of finding equivalent software, learning the system and such, he is happy to be able to work without worrying too much about data safety. The only thing is that he was on Mac OS for years, so switching from Mac OS to Linux is more difficult than switching from Windows to Linux....). If you know how to use a Windows computer, then, using a Linux computer will be not as difficult as you may think.
No no, it's not too good to be true, it is because the system architecture is very different. Windows works on a registry base, so as soon as you catch a malware, it destroys the whole system. Linux has a root system which asks a password every time you want to change it : if a malware gets introduced in the system, the password system blocks it unless you type the password. Linux is made on such a way that destroying the system with a malware is nearly impossible.
The plus side in such a period of crisis is that you can have an office suite (LibreOffice), a graphic software equivalent and even better than Photoshop free of charge (GIMP), a superb email client (among them, Thunderbird by Mozilla, definitely my favorite email client), a multimedia reader (the most popular is VLC), video editor, even some games.... all of this free of charge.
No no, it's not too good to be true, it's the open source magic
So, you save something like 1000$.
Even your old computer will resuscitate on Linux, because it uses less CPU and less disk space.
I switched all the home computers on Linux two years and a half ago, and even if I were paid billions of dollars for a lifetime, I definitely stay on my Ubuntu system.
Even my mother, who grumped all the time at the beginning, wished she could switch on Linux with her job computer (she cannot do it at the moment because she needs a software for her job, software whom has no equivalent in the open source world).