Since I was very pleased that AVAST! found something during the initial scan and seemed to be doing something positive, I agreed to let it perform the boot scan. I downloaded free AVAST! and it immediately discovered a Trojan virus, and then recommended that I allow it to automatically restart the computer and perform an AVAST! boot scan. Soon after, a neighbor who recently graduated with a degree in computer IT told me to try using AVG or AVAST! to perform the virus/malware scan. I immediately performed a full scan of the hard drive with update-to-date MSSE and it found nothing suspicious. This immediately resulted in slow-down of the computer (especially while surfing the internet) and the start of ghost audio (e.g., like listening to FM radio ads with bad reception) playing constantly after connecting to the internet, and this ghost audio would not stop unless the computer was restarted, and then would always immediately start again after reconnecting to the internet by opening MS Explorer browser. Recently my wife got some sort of pop-up while using Skype, and she clicked on a 'No Thanks' button in the pop-up window. I purchased the computer new several years ago, and it is stock (i.e., no hardware mods).
I have an Acer AX3810-U1802 desktop running 64-bit Windows 7 with Microsoft Security Essentials (MSSE) as the only virus/malware software.
