Computer help forum: Antivirus won't update...

It's time to format I would say. You may or may not be able to dig yourself out of this particular hole if you kept at it long enough, but the quick and easy solution here is just to format and start over.

Hopefully you have some backups from before you got hit with whatever hit you, because if you back up anything now, there's no real way to tell whether or not you'll just end up reinfecting your system when you go to restore them. Among other lessons, let this be a lesson on the importance of regular backups.

Be sure to go to some other system and burn a CD with any updated drivers, an AV program installer, the offline installer for SP3, and a firewall program if you don't want to use XP's.

Now, disconnect your system from the Internet, and do not reconnect it again until you have formatted, installed SP3, and have an anti-virus and firewall up and running. That's why you put all that stuff onto a CD earlier.

Then you can set about IMMEDIATELY downloading the latest security updates from Windows Update. Do NOTHING else until that is finished.

After you've done all that, you can start loading on your usual assortment of programs. I'm also going to include my list of things to do and not do in order to avoid problems like this in the future.

TIPS FOR A SMOOTH RUNNING SYSTEM
================================

The more of these suggestions you follow, the fewer problems you should have. Follow them all, and you've probably eliminated at least 95% of all potential problem sources.

Things you should NOT do
--------------------------------
1: Use Internet Explorer
2: Use any browser based on Internet Explorer
3: Use Outlook or Outlook Express
4: Open email attachments you haven't manually scanned with your virus scanner
5: Open email attachments you were not expecting, no matter who they appear to be from
6: Respond to spam messages, including using unsubscribe links
7: Visit questionable websites (e.g. porn, warez, hacking)
8: Poke unnecessary holes in your firewall by clicking "Allow" every time some program requests access to the Internet
9: Click directly on links in email messages
10: Use file sharing or P2P programs
11: Use pirated programs

Things you SHOULD do
-----------------------------
1: Use a non-IE or IE based browser
2: Always have an up to date virus scanner running
3: Always have a firewall running
4: Install all the latest security updates (the exception to the no-IE rule)
5: Delete all unsolicited emails containing attachments without reading
6: Manually scan all email attachments with your virus scanner, regardless of whether it's supposed to be done automatically
7: Copy and paste URLs from email messages into your web browser
8: Inspect links copied and pasted into your web browser to ensure they don't seem to contain a second/different address

Well, formatting gets rid of everything, so you don't need to worry about that. If there's anything you want to save, you'd best be putting it onto CDs, DVDs, flash drives, or whatever else you can. This is why you have backups of anything important.

If you need a step by step guide, then google is your friend. There are probably countless websites out there that offer various levels of hand-holding. I don't really do that anymore, so I'll once again say that google is your friend.

search for your HOSTS file and rename it with any extension (such as HOSTS.old or even rename the file OLDHOSTS) as it is quite likely that this is all that is preventing your accessing the sites assuming you can access other sites on the web. The HOSTS file can be located in the following location windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts assuming that your Windows directory is named Windows and not Winnt or something similar.

Another possible location of your connection problem would be your Firewall (which you didn't mention having or not having) - check it to see that it is not set to deny the apps making connections for updates.

I don't know if you (or anyone else) is still reading this thread, but if so, please let me know if you fixed your problem and how. I too am on Windows XP and for at least two weeks now, have had the EXACT same issues that you listed from the anti-virus software not updating to the link redirecting to the wrong sites, mostly ones trying to get me to buy their anti-virus/spyware software. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

Grif - Thank you for the response. So far, I've downloaded AVG 8.0 and Kaspersky. I downloaded AVG when I realized the Norton software on my computer had expired and at the advice of a couple others who use it and also have Windows Vista. For the first couple of days, it seemed to update and work just fine and then it stopped updating and no matter what I did, it would not allow me to update. I even tried updating from the directory and that didn't work. I looked into downloading Windows Defender and couldn't get past the validation process to download the software. I uninstalled AVG and the downloaded and reinstalled it and after it didn't work the second time, decided to try another software, Kaspersky (at the recommendation of CNET). It too will not update no matter what I do. In between downloading AVG and Kaspersky, both of which are on my computer, I also downloaded Glary's Utilities and have been using that. When I first downloaded Glary's, it did detect a spyware program and removed it. I'm hesitant to download anymore tools at this point, b/c none of them seem to be working anyway and I don't want to cause anymore problems. I'm able to scan for viruses, but since the tools won't update, they're not tracking any new viruses/spyware. I'll try some of the suggestions here, but again, if any other advise can be given, I would appreciate it. Thanks!

hey guys my antivirus(nod32 4.0) is not updating. it is saying "updating failed" i tried to do as you said but nothing worked please tell me any altermative methods please.................guys.. anyone?