My Toshiba Satellite 1715XCDS lap top has suddenly stopped being able to access the internet. We have checked all the usual suspects; phone line problems, modem settings, com port settings and the such like, and a friend who works in IT has been left fairly stumped by this. As far as we can see it can only be a corrupted device driver (though settings claims that this is working) or something to do with a dodgy email I received the other day... it turned up with the subject line "I Hope You Like This" and appeared to have an attachment of about 140Kb. When I unwisely clicked on it nothing appeared to happen, but after this point my internet connection went down with the dial up box telling me that there was no dial tone detected (it's been checked exhaustively and the line is fine). In addition to this my help browser informed me that COM port 3 (the one my modem uses)might have been disabled... can a virus do this? I've checked the system settings and under the COM and LPTI ports section the printer port is the only one listed... does this mean COM 3 has been disabled, even though the device driver properties box on my modem lists the driver as working and being connected to COM 3? I am hopelessly behind on my college work as the computer has been off line for two days... please can somebody come to my rescue. Thanks in advance Sarah

Do you have any anti virus software on your laptop? If you do, run it. I strongly suspect that you have, indeed, been infected since the subject line is very indicative of a virus. Some viruses disable your anti virus programs so that you are unable to update.

That subject line is often seen on some versions of the Klez virus and the Bugbear virus. The Klez virus normally has a e-mail size of 140k also. I would recommend you go to the Symantec Removal Tools site and download a copy of their W32.Klez removal tool and Bugbear virus tools. Copy them to a Diskette or CD so you can copy them to and run them on your machine. They will remove the virus if it is on the machine. Hopefully it might fix your internet connection problem. Also, RUN the MSCONFIG program. Select the Startup tab and look at the list of programs being started at startup. If any in the list begin with WINK*, then remove it from the startup list first, as that is a sure sign of an infection with the Klez virus. I would have expected any IT person to know about these simple check for the common Klez virus.