My niece's laptop is having some problems. Running Windows 7 Pro 1) It no longer will connect to internet, whether wireless or wired 2) The USB ports are no longer being recognized by the system 3) When running various programs including DDS, I get the following error The specified device does not exist as an installed service I was able to copy over "HijackThis" from another computer and run it. Note: When running HijackThis, the following error/warning was experienced ============== "For some reason your system denied write access to the Hosts file. If any hijacked domains are in this file. HijackThis may NOT be able to fix this. If that happens, you need to edit the file yourself. To do this, click Start, Run and type notepad C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and press enter Find the line(s) Hijackthis reports and delete them. Save the file as "hosts" and reboot. " ===================================== I was not able to find any lines in that file related to HijackThis. Here is the resulting logfile from the run which does not look like a full log to me. ======================================================= Logfile of Trend Micro HijackThis v2.0.4 Scan saved at 1:38:21 PM, on 11/16/2012 Platform: Windows 7 SP1 (WinNT 6.00.3505) MSIE: Internet Explorer v9.00 (9.00.8112.16450) Boot mode: Normal Running processes: C:\Windows\system32\taskhost.exe C:\Windows\system32\Dwm.exe C:\Windows\Explorer.EXE C:\Program Files\McAfee\VirusScan Enterprise\SHSTAT.EXE C:\Users\T61p\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\bin\Dropbox.exe C:\Users\T61p\Desktop\HiJackThis.exe R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = https://www.google.com/ R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Search_URL = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Search Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54896 R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=69157 R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,SearchAssistant = R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Search,CustomizeSearch = R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar,LinksFolderName = F2 - REG:system.ini: UserInit=userinit.exe, O2 - BHO: AcroIEHelperStub - {18DF081C-E8AD-4283-A596-FA578C2EBDC3} - C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Acrobat\ActiveX\AcroIEHelperShim.dll O2 - BHO: Java™ Plug-In SSV Helper - {761497BB-D6F0-462C-B6EB-D4DAF1D92D43} - C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\ssv.dll O2 - BHO: scriptproxy - {7DB2D5A0-7241-4E79-B68D-6309F01C5231} - C:\Program Files\Common Files\McAfee\SystemCore\ScriptSn.20111004203608.dll O2 - BHO: Java™ Plug-In 2 SSV Helper - {DBC80044-A445-435b-BC74-9C25C1C588A9} - C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\jp2ssv.dll O4 - HKLM\..\RunOnce: [Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (cleanup)] rundll32.exe "C:\ProgramData\Malwarebytes\Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware\cleanup.dll",ProcessCleanupScript O4 - Startup: Dropbox.lnk = C:\Users\T61p\AppData\Roaming\Dropbox\bin\Dropbox.exe O8 - Extra context menu item: E&xport to Microsoft Excel - res://C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\Office12\EXCEL.EXE/3000 O9 - Extra button: Research - {92780B25-18CC-41C8-B9BE-3C9C571A8263} - C:\PROGRA~1\MICROS~1\Office12\REFIEBAR.DLL O11 - Options group: [ACCELERATED_GRAPHICS] Accelerated graphics O23 - Service: McAfee Framework Service (McAfeeFramework) - McAfee, Inc. - C:\Program Files\McAfee\Common Framework\FrameworkService.exe O23 - Service: McAfee McShield (McShield) - McAfee, Inc. - C:\Program Files\Common Files\McAfee\SystemCore\\mcshield.exe O23 - Service: McAfee Task Manager (McTaskManager) - McAfee, Inc. - C:\Program Files\McAfee\VirusScan Enterprise\VsTskMgr.exe O23 - Service: McAfee Validation Trust Protection Service (mfevtp) - McAfee, Inc. - C:\Windows\system32\mfevtps.exe -- End of file - 2992 bytes