Two days ago, I downloaded a freeware program called free video converter from a website called dvdvideosoft.com. They had no negative pages on Google about their company or the product, so I downloaded the file and used it to convert a mp4 video to an iphone-compatible video.
Then I noticed some strange things happening. My Firefox browser settings changed (orange Firefox box was missing, File Menu Bar was in its place, every time I would open up the browser I would get a tab without a close button saying that my search couldn't find "postit") Then, about 15 programs, including firefox, itunes, and explorer, started running as 32-bit. I know this has never happened before because I've looked at the Task Manager plenty of times in the four weeks I've had this computer and never seen "iTunes.exe *32".
Then, this morning, my computer was in sleep mode, and it wouldn't resume windows. I'd get the initial boot screen, but then it would freeze on a black screen before the "resuming windows" screen could appear. I tried turning off and turning on the computer several times, and eventually did a systems diagnostic check and a BIOS restore and got the computer to boot up properly.
I installed and ran Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Avast anti-virus programs, neither which found anything wrong with the computer. I restored the computer to a system restore point that was set the day before I downloaded this program. I uninstalled and reinstalled the firefox browser a couple of times and finally did get that to work.
What would suddenly cause my four week-old computer (from Dell) to suddenly start running almost all the programs as 32-bit instead of 64-bit, and how can I fix this? How can I ensure that I don't have any type of malicious program on my laptop that is causing all of these new mysterious issues?
Thanks for reading and all your help.
Then I noticed some strange things happening. My Firefox browser settings changed (orange Firefox box was missing, File Menu Bar was in its place, every time I would open up the browser I would get a tab without a close button saying that my search couldn't find "postit") Then, about 15 programs, including firefox, itunes, and explorer, started running as 32-bit. I know this has never happened before because I've looked at the Task Manager plenty of times in the four weeks I've had this computer and never seen "iTunes.exe *32".
Then, this morning, my computer was in sleep mode, and it wouldn't resume windows. I'd get the initial boot screen, but then it would freeze on a black screen before the "resuming windows" screen could appear. I tried turning off and turning on the computer several times, and eventually did a systems diagnostic check and a BIOS restore and got the computer to boot up properly.
I installed and ran Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Avast anti-virus programs, neither which found anything wrong with the computer. I restored the computer to a system restore point that was set the day before I downloaded this program. I uninstalled and reinstalled the firefox browser a couple of times and finally did get that to work.
What would suddenly cause my four week-old computer (from Dell) to suddenly start running almost all the programs as 32-bit instead of 64-bit, and how can I fix this? How can I ensure that I don't have any type of malicious program on my laptop that is causing all of these new mysterious issues?
Thanks for reading and all your help.
