First time poster but once I saw this thread just had to post. HANDLE ALL BUSINESS TRANSACTIONS PERSONALLY, CHECK UP ON YOUR BUILDER and know exactly which companies they use so that you can personally check the invoices and accounts :) Speaking from experience, a horrible, terrible experience. We began construction in April 2010 using a Highly recommended builder who was also our Uncle's cousin. We interviewed some of his old clients, some of his current clients, no problems. After we felt confident we signed the contract, got our plans and he began construction. He was professional (receipts, permits etc), the house was coming up in a timely manner and about 3 months in we get a call from the cement company wanting their bill paid. Then we get a call from the Electrician, then the Hvac, then the plumber, lumber company etc....all wanting their money to the tune of $50,000. Then the calls from his other current clients start coming in.... he did the same thing to them. About this time is when he disappears and leaves us with the mess. Remember this was a relative w/ a good reputation. We thought we took every precaution, receipts from him saying everything was paid and only gave him the exact amount he asked for by using a construction loan with a draw type acct...never gave any extra. But he was using our money to cover his other projects since he had went in debt on them too. For some reason the lumber, cement and other companies were STILL giving him in store credit even though he had hundreds of thousands overdue. In court for two years since they tried to sue him but that pond was dry (took his land, house, vehicles everything) but money was still owed so they tried to come after us. Thankfully our receipts, recorded phone calls and misc info saved us. We plan to build again in the future but will personally manage all the money and have a tight reign on everything that happens throughout the building process. And he was "jacking up the invoices" too, by about 40%.... never, ever again will I trust any builder with paying my construction bills. Did I mention we had to replace our roof shingles because they were installed wrong and rotted the wood around the edge? And had to replace the showers because noone waterproofed the walls or sealed the drain so black mold set in? Don't expect inspectors to catch everything either.... Our situation is definitely in the minority but these horror stories do happen.

I am strictly and IE gal so to speak. Have used it since I first got online with windows 98 and never a bit of trouble for me so I must be the odd man out. Currently running 2 computers with windows 7 and IE 11 and it works perfect. I can't stand firefox. For some strange reason it takes longer to open than IE and freezes and I have to wait to type the web address in to get where I am going. Never tried chrome and don't care to since IE gives me no trouble. I am sure someone could help me figure the firefox stuff out but I just don't care to bother since IE works perfect. Mary

owbist, Thanks for the links to SuperAntiSpy and AVG Antispy, I down loaded both and found a few items. I note two things: 1) Spybot, I now have 1.5.2, has an active component. It detected the installation of the new antispy software and stopped them from making changes in the Registry until I gave approval..this looks like a big plus and shouldn't be a lot of extra work as there shouldn't be much activity going on making changes in the Registry during normal business operations. 2) Avg offered a "use once" for items found along with quarantine, as well as remove, with use once being the default. Why would one not, as I normally do, just remove? Is it safer to quarantine for a few days before removing to see if the removal may have some undesired affect? I also none that SuperAntiSpy saw AVG tracking cookies, and no surprise AVT Antispy didn't. I removed the AVG tracking tool

"Browser Defender" is a legitimate program, but that DOES NOT mean that the "alert" is legitimate! This shows why these things work for the ones trying to cause trouble. They often attach a legitimate name or a similar sounding name and people go oh, that's safe and BAM, your suckered. Keep alert folks, there's more to it than meets the eye. When you have stuff like this popping up, it's time to double check your defenses. When you say you can't do anything on your computer, is that because you're infected? If so, you may well be infecting your husband's system too. Let's face it, IF your system is infected and that's causing the trouble, then it's likely that your husband's machine is no better secured than yours, and your surfing habits allow stuff in. If that's the case, it's only a matter of time before his machine is paralyzed too, again, assuming that your machine is infected. You need to take action now. You need a good antivirus program and there's a lot of good free ones out there too so there's no excuse for not having one. AVG, Avira, Avast are a few good free ones, but you need to understand that many malware issues are not viruses so an antivirus is only one tool you need in your defense arsenal. Don't think that just because you have an antivirus, you have everything you need. You may have a stove in your house but you probably need a refrigerator too. And a toilet. And a sink. Don't get fooled into thinking one appliance will do everything for you. Your most important and first line of defense is a firewall. Windows built in firewall is feeble at best but better than nothing until you can immediately get something better. I like Comodo the best of all I've used. Spybot, SuperAntiSpyware, A-squared, Malwarebytes and more are good anti-malware programs and supplement your antivirus. They do different jobs. Spywareblaster is an excellent program, especially if you insist on using Internet Explorer. IE is the swiss cheese of browsers, security-wise. You're inviting trouble by using it. Opera, Safari, Firefox, K-meleon, Mozilla, Chrome, there's lots of excellent browsers out there far more secure. Advanced SystemCare is a fantastic multi-function program to keep in the arsenal. Watch your email. Don't just open it because it tells you to! Although infections through email are far less common these days there's still enough of them to warrant concern. Most malware these days come from "drive by" infections. You go to a site and it installs it on your system and you won't even know about it when you don't use a firewall, real-time antivirus and check for malware regularly. But the most important thing to staying safe is yourself. Educate yourself on safe surfing. Don't be afraid to use your computer, but use it safely. I haven't had a virus on my system in over 10 years and caught all of them that got on there. (They were email attachments from foolish people who forward every "cute" thing to everyone in their address book.) I credit this to several things: 1) Using Opera as my primary browser. It's the most secure browser out there. 2) Having Spywareblaster on my machines. I was laughed at by many of the people in the Comphelp forum when I suggested Spywareblaster (at the time - *most* of those people are now gone) but it showed promise to me and has long since proven itself. 3) I regularly update Windows, browsers, antivirus, malware detectors, etc. 4) The firewall is the first thing installed on a system and it's turned on BEFORE connecting to the internet. Occasionally I get a caution that something is wrong and I can look at it and see that it should not be installing something like that. 5) I replace all feeble programs with better ones. IE and Windows Firewall as examples. For that matter I even replace the calculator, media player, even the clock and Notepad programs with better stuff. Makes "computing" more productive and enjoyable. 6) I don't click on popups! I close them. And by using Opera I get very few unwanted popups anyway. 7) If I am suspicious that something might have gotten past my multi-layered defenses, I'll use an online scanner like TrendMicro or Bitdefender to do an online scan of my system (or the system in question). and the last thing I can think of offhand, though there probably will be more I think of later: 8) I try to educate myself on cons. One of my biggest frustrations is when I see someone jump on the internet shouting "LOOK EVERYONE, I'M USING MY NEW COMPUTER!!! JUST GOT IT TODAY!!!!!! I know that's a service call waiting to happen. And then they blame the computer. (sigh) Happy and safe computing to all and to all a good afternoon.