The correct web address for the Forum is http://forum.portraitartist.com. There is no www - it is replaced by "forum." There is also a link from the home page of my main site to the Forum if you ever have any doubt about the url.

Kim,

You are not alone.

About a year ago, I saved my husband's computer from becoming an anchor for our boat. Good thing I did; I am using it right now because my laptop is not feeling quite right and hasn't for a few days. It all started for me when those security messages that you mentioned came up. I only got them when I was connected via our dial up service, but when I was wireless to our cable connection, never saw them.

Because it wasn't consistent, I ignored them but then I went to the Microsoft website to see if they were legit. Maybe I fell for something I shouldn't have, but it looked as if I was suppose to download the patch so I did.

Now, I don't get the messages anymore but I get re-directed to a Yahoo web page with an address of j0r.biz followed by pop ups for dowloading wallpaper that take forever to close even after hitting the "close" button a zillion times. Also, I keep getting "page cannot be displayed" even when I am connected.

I'm current on my virus protection and I run the ad-aware and Spy Bot
and all scans come out clean.

All you Mac users out there, stop laughing.

Seriously, Macs are looking better and better to me these days. We just need four more boats to accommodate all of the anchors we have in this house.

It's enough to drive ya nuts!!

I'm pretty sure the Giant Software I bought detects hijacked browser home pages and gives you the option to reset it.

Kim,

I will be very happy when you get this figured out.

PLEASE HURRY!! : )

Janel,

I wouldnt count on me figuring anything out anytime soon! I can get on the forum, update my website, shop, etc... so I am satisfied for the time being!

Kim,

I was just having some fun, I don't expect you to figure out my computer problems for me. I took it into my own hands and did some research and found out the "can not display page" message even though your connection was still active was because of a hijacker. I was told that as the hijacker was doing its thing it was taking priority over the web browser and therefore other pages that you wanted to view were timing out and sending the "page can not be displayed" message.

I got to the bottom of it by going to hijackthis and doing a scan, then when I got the report of questionable files, deleted the ones that were causing the problem. Then I did a virus scan from a free download and it found a virus that my paid Norton anti virus missed. Go figure.

Anyway, I thought I would pass this on in case anyone else is having this same problem. It sure wasn't fun to get rid of.

On another note, and perhaps a discussion for another topic, when I did a google search about the problem, my own response from this forum came up in the results. So, Google picks up our conversations. I remember Garth bringing this up some time ago and thought it is worth another reminder for us to keep this in the back of our minds as we type.