I had a strange feeling my AVG anti-virus program wasn't running because I wasn't hearing the weekly humming of my hard drive.

So I checked it today and sure enough the weekly scheduled scans were disabled. The last scan was May 15th 2012

Any clues as to what happened? I definitely didn't disable it. --And I definitely had it doing a weekly scan when I re-formatted my hard drive last January.

I don't go near porn sites or other similar risky stuff.

Thanks for any answers or help.

Almost certainly malware. Is your windows update still working? Malware will usually try to disable many security features of the OS.

I just found the same problem on the GF's cpu. Something is preventing Windows update from downloading the security updates as well. I ran a cleaner and a scan and it proved ineffective. What would be the next step to take?

DoX

It could be a rootkit, which is malware that hides in system locations or even your master boot record. They are hard to detect and even harder to remove.

Fastest/cheapest method is

1) Backup her data to external drive or even flash drive if it's small

2) run dban to secure erase the drive (write 0 to every location on the hard drive). Malware can hang around if you only reformat and reinstall windows.

3) reinstall windows

4) install sandboxie and run browser in sandboxie.

4) is optional but will help a lot with picking up random malware from unsafe browsing.

Tyty! I will give it a try.

DoX

I would say I am fairly effective at finding and removing rootkits.

It is noted that I have seen a WINXP computer with the same problem, AVG turned off, and it was not related to malware.

Please follow the instructions from HERE and post the logs in this thread.