I got a bad virus sometime back, couldn’t get rid of it so we used DBAN and wiped out the whole thing and started over.
To really be sure, it is best to back up your data and start fresh. Personally (and professionally), I prefer Trend Micro’s products (antivirus.com). They have an online checker as well.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/products.php
Download the Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware scanner from the above link. Run a scan and remove all malicious softwares found.
Then install Spybot Search and Destroy, and run a scan.
These two are two of the best cleaning utilites out there.
Avast is pretty good, guards against the usual malware and also rootkits, which other free antivirus utilities generally don’t. http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html
But your problem may be related to last week’s Windows Update, which had compatibility problems with some firewalls (including the very popular ZoneAlarm) which cut off internet access on afflicted machines. If you use ZoneAlarm (or if AOL’s utility has a firewall), try reducing your firewall setting to “medium”. That might bring back your internet connection.
Ditto on the AVG.
Totally non-intrusive, very lightweight and highly effective.
Not to mention FREE!
http://free.avg.com/ww.download-avg-anti-virus-free-edition
You’ll also want to get Ad-Aware 2008 to purge all spy/adware from your system:
http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php
One thing viruses like to do, is to disable any attempt to load AV software. So before you install one of those, you should probably run something like Stinger, which is McAfee's free offering that catches most common viruses.
Is your workstation setup as a DHCP client? What happens when you configure a static IP? Are you able to ping that router? Are you able to ping different hosts on your wlan? What happens when you manually flush the dns resolver cache, or manually force a dhcp renewal?
c:\>ipconfig /flushdns
c:\>ipconfig /release
c:\>ipconfig /renew
You probably need more than one since all have their quirks and oversights. You’ll get lots of standard suggestions.
One that I use is Threatfire, because it resides in your computer and stops malware from installing itself. Most anti-virus programs have to wait until the malware is identified as a threat, do the software engineering to meet the problem, and then download to your machine. This can obviously take some time.
Buy some imaging software, reformat, reinstall software, image your machine and never worry about another virus, trojan, etc killing your machine...
ABN (anything but Norton, I have AVG and it works well. AOL? For your Apple IIE?
http://www.Trendmicro.com and run the free House Call scan.
Some of the other suggestions are also very good.