My Win98se machine has started to act very strange during the last week. I
have the Microsoft Office Toolbar on the top of my Desktop which includes
shortcuts to MSWord, Notepad, Windows Explorer, etc. When I try to use the
MS Word shortcut icon on the Office Toolbar, Sygate Personal Firewall tell
me that "Microsoft Word For Windows is trying to connect to crl.verisign.com
(64.94.110.12) using remote port 80.....". I instruct Sygate not to allow
the connection, then everything slows down and it takes a long time for Word
to load. When it finally does load, everything has slowed down and it takes
forever to Open files, Save files, etc.. I have never gotten this warning
from Sygate before and why would activating Word from a shortcut on the
Office Toolbar, cause it to try to connect to the internet? I get the same
Sygate message when I try to launch Windows Explorer from the Tool Bar.
Sounds like some kind of Virus/Trojan/Hijacker has infected my computer.
Any help or ideas will be greatly appreciated. Thank you. Mike H
PS: I've run Norton Antivirus, Spybot, Stinger, and CWshredder. All are
current. They don't find anything on my computer. Occasionally when I'm on
the internet I get the "About:Blank" window on the bottom of my screen. I
don't know if that has anything to do with the current problem.