Last night my son downloaded from a chat program what turned out to be
an infected file. My son says the file was named "pictures.pif" . Since
then I've had problems with Internet Explorer ActiveX security
settings. I get the following Internet Explorer dialog box message:
"your current security settings prohibit running ActiveX controls on
this page..."

Here's when it happens: 1. when my Windows desktop is loading, I get
the message. Once I click OK in the message box, Desktop appears to
finish loading correctly. 2.When I'm working in Windows Explorer, and
click on a folder in the left pane, the right pane remains blank and
the message box pops up, 3. When I open Control Panel, the message pops
up and I'm unable to open any selections such as Add/Remove Programs,
4.When I try to run Norton Antivirus, nothing happens. Other aspects of
Norton Systemworks are not affected. There may be other Windows
operations affected as well; these are the ones I've come across
thusfar.

Here's what I've tried to correct the problem. 1.I downloaded
Spyware Doctor (S.D.) and on the first run it found lots of problems,
one of which was that my browser had been hijacked and security
settings had been manipulated. The location of the infection was noted
as "multiple". I allowed S.D. to clean this up, but the problem
persists. 2.I manually checked security settings in IE6. IE6 security
is set as "medium" and settings look fine. 3.Since I couldn't
operate Norton Antivirus, I ran an online scan from TrendMicro.com It
found nothing. 4.I ran Spybot and Adware with the latest definitions.
They each found some problems and cleaned them up.

None of the solutions has resolved the problem. Interestingly, the
problem hasn't prevented me from downloading and installing the
latest Windows critical update, which I did earlier today. One other
point, which may or may not make any difference: IE is not my default
browser, Firefox is.

Obviously something is very wrong. Can you help?

Something here may help..
http://www.jayloden.com/BestFriends.htm

<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> Last night my son downloaded from a chat program what turned out to be
> an infected file. My son says the file was named "pictures.pif" . Since
> then I've had problems with Internet Explorer ActiveX security
> settings. I get the following Internet Explorer dialog box message:
> "your current security settings prohibit running ActiveX controls on
> this page..."
>
> Here's when it happens: 1. when my Windows desktop is loading, I get
> the message. Once I click OK in the message box, Desktop appears to
> finish loading correctly. 2.When I'm working in Windows Explorer, and
> click on a folder in the left pane, the right pane remains blank and
> the message box pops up, 3. When I open Control Panel, the message pops
> up and I'm unable to open any selections such as Add/Remove Programs,
> 4.When I try to run Norton Antivirus, nothing happens. Other aspects of
> Norton Systemworks are not affected. There may be other Windows
> operations affected as well; these are the ones I've come across
> thusfar.
>
> Here's what I've tried to correct the problem. 1.I downloaded
> Spyware Doctor (S.D.) and on the first run it found lots of problems,
> one of which was that my browser had been hijacked and security
> settings had been manipulated. The location of the infection was noted
> as "multiple". I allowed S.D. to clean this up, but the problem
> persists. 2.I manually checked security settings in IE6. IE6 security
> is set as "medium" and settings look fine. 3.Since I couldn't
> operate Norton Antivirus, I ran an online scan from TrendMicro.com It
> found nothing. 4.I ran Spybot and Adware with the latest definitions.
> They each found some problems and cleaned them up.
>
> None of the solutions has resolved the problem. Interestingly, the
> problem hasn't prevented me from downloading and installing the
> latest Windows critical update, which I did earlier today. One other
> point, which may or may not make any difference: IE is not my default
> browser, Firefox is.
>
> Obviously something is very wrong. Can you help?
>