[dullvj]

I use this computer to login (VPN) to a MN County website to do programming. The computer is 2 months old. I have kept most "fun" stuff off of it and limit use on the internet just so these problems won't happen. I noticed the first problem the first week of February. The computer would not "restart"--still won't. It will go down, but then I have to manually shut it off and then turn it back on. If I select "shutdown", it shuts down just fine.
On February 12th I installed IBM Client Access to facilitate logging on to the county site. At that time I had Spy Sweeper installed. I uninstalled it because it was very slow and I thought it might be causing the shutdown problem.

Last Thursday, the county login threw my into "protected workspace". This means that it's scan determined that my security wasn't up to snuff. I attempted to open my Norton Anti-virus, but it would not open. I was able to open it in safe mode and noticed that the latest virus updates were from 2/11. I updated in safe mode and scanned in safe mode--nothing. Meanwhile, I had read some posts on this site and ran the SuperAntispyware and AVG. I also ran TrendMicros Housecall. They found nothing. I also have Avast running again--nothing.

I usually login to the county with 4 screens. From time to time, one or two of those sessions will be disconnected. This may or may not be related. My monitor blanks out at times--I have 2 monitors--if I wiggle the "other" cable, the monitor will come back on. That may be a cable or computer problem, but I thought I'd throw it in here. Four days ago, my little icon for my email in MSN premium changed. I didn't change it--it changed by itself. I have two email addresses/icons. Only one of them changed. Today when I try to open my email, I get a box that says:

"Windows cannot open this file: MSN3.mailhost. To open this file Windows must know what program created it. Windows can go online to look it up automatically, or you can manually select it from a list of programs on your computer. What do you want to do?"

(Scream was not in the list)

I am new to this posting stuff so I was following your list of things that I should do. Most of them I had already done, but I had not run the Panda scanner, so I started the scan. About halfway through, AVAST popped up and said:

A Virus was found!

File name: http://acs.pandasoft...#092;pskavs.DLL
Malware Name: Win32:CTX
Malware type: Virus/Worm
VPS version: 000722-0, 03/06/2007

I am presented with a button that says "Abort Connection" and the verbiage that says " When you click on the "Abort connection" button, the download of the dangerous file will be canceled.

I did not disable any of the other virus/spyware programs before I started the Panda scan. Perhaps this is a false positive? I am unsure what to do...