none of my media players are working now...windows media player and realplayer both freeze everytime i try to play a video file or try to listen to radio online...is this a symptom of a virus? please help

realplayer used to freeze on me when I tried to play a file with it. Realplayer was trying to contact the Internet (what for I don't know, spam probably). Uninstalling Realplayer, and re-installing, but this time not giving permission to 'LOOK FOR UPGRADES' and other offers disguised as a help (but really a hinderance). Don't know about Windows Media Player. If you think your anti-virus program missed a virus, you can do a free online scan from.... http://housecall.trendmicro.com/housecall/start_corp.asp If you don't have an anti-virus program, a good free one (AVG 6)was available from... www.grisoft.com Version 7 is not free (all good things come to an end). There is still a rogue file that tries to contact the Internet but this can be curtailed by re-starting the PC in 'safe mode' and searching for, then re-naming, realevent.exe to realevent.ex-