Is this a virus? HELP!

[Bettybloo]

MY computer has started telling me it "has performed an illegal function and will be shut down" completely randomly - some sites it won't let me on at all, others like ebay it will let me on but not search, and others (mumsnet thank god!) it seems fine with. I thought it was all up to date with virus protection, but this does seem to have started since I tried to download a live link to Big Brother. Any ideas? I am clueless and techy dp is away.

Sounds like it could be. Go to here and run their virus scan and see what it comes up with.

Thank you. I'm scanning it now.
My 9yo ds has just come in and said knowledgably "yep. that's a virus"

When you have the name of the virus (if it is indeed a virus) go to Norton, find your virus in the list and follow the removeal instructions. Generally speaking, they're fairly striaght forward. You might need to print of several sets of instructions which tell you how to do certain steps to ensure the removal. Read the removal instructions in full to see what other instructions you need to find.

Agree with Soupy on Norton Symantec Website. Their online virus scan is quite good too (picked up a virus on my pc that my anti-virus didn't).

One piece of advice I would give is, if you need to go in and delete any registry enteries, be VERY careful and follow the instructions to the letter as the registry is a very very important part of your pc and it's running

Thank you both. Unfortunately, bggr it, it's just finished scanning and no virus found. However, if it's not a virus, it's presumably not my fault, so I haven't got to panic about fixing it before dp gets back tomorrow. Just cant do big frivolous spendup on ebay, oh well.
It's very wierd though - I just tried ebay again, and it let me search this time, but then closed me down when I tried to go to one of things I'd searched. And it won't let me go to things on my favourites, but will open stuff thats in the URL.
I shall let dp sort it out - just what he'll want to do after a flight from Japan
Thanks for your help though. I was quite looking forward to getting technical and fixing it myself!

BB sorry just reading your original post again, does your pc shut down or just the web page you are trying to browse?

If it's just the page then it's not a virus as this used to happen to me with my first (2nd hand) pc. It could be a few things, more so if your pc is a bit older/not very powerful.

It stopped happening to me as soon as I upgraded (although I upgraded my whole pc ) but it could also be that you maybe just need to reinstall windows

It's just the web page. It is a fairly old laptop and seems to be getting slower and slower - it hangs a lot. Is reinstalling windows fairly simple? Because I am

To do a full reinstall you will need the Windows Disk (not the restore one that pc shops give you). What windows is it running? I'm presuming not something like XP since it is fairly old, is it Windows 98?

If that doesn't work though and you still get the message after a reinstall, it may mean you need to get a new laptop or pc as you can't upgrade laptops