My spyware said what????

I have posted previously about being in the 3% of the population that weird things happen to.  Well, last night was no exception.  I am a VERY careful computer user.  I have been working with and upgrading computers since the early 1980's. Yes, that was actually before Bill Gates pushed Windows onto the computer world and changed my life forever. But, I digress.

I run an antivirus program with spyware protection, web page link protection, email protection, and rootkit protection so nothing can be changed in the registry, etc.  I also run a separate spyware/malware program that is supposed to go much further beyond what the antivirus program will do.  I update each program every morning and run scans from both programs once a week.  I have two external hard drives to which I back up important files and data.  I do not click on links in emails or open web pages that I don't know what they are.  I do not even open emails that look suspicious.

Sounds like I have all my bases covered, doesn't it.  Well, last night, I was sitting in my recliner watching TV (or sleeping, as the case may be) minding my own business.  I came in later to turn the computer off before going to bed, and I noticed an alert had come up from the spyware program saying it had blocked a potential threat and I needed to run a scan.  I tried to click on it to run the scan and the whole message disappeared, along with several icons in my system tray.  The two most important icons to disappear were the antivirus program icon and the spyware program.

Not to be deterred, I restarted the computer in "safe" mode and ran the scan.  It started showing hundreds and then thousands of "infected" files.  I knew that could not be true, so I stopped it and tried to run a virus scan.  I could not get either the virus program or the spyware program to run.  I gave up for the night and went to bed.

This morning, I got up at 5:00am and started all over again trying to fix the problem.  I checked the spyware's program forum messages, and there were quite a few people who were having the same problem I was having.  The tech support posted a message saying that "the issue is related to a transitory problem  we were having with the definition database".  They found the problem and corrected it in a matter of 10 minutes. Really??  So, the spyware program screwed itself up??  All I had to do was update to the newest latest definition and everything would be fixed.  Only problem is that the program wouldn't run so it was impossible to update it.

Again, no hill for a climber.  I downloaded the definitions from their web site and ran a scan directly from their site and there were no infections at all.  But, the program's icon and the antivirus icons were still no where to be found.  And I had a feeling that other icons were missing too because the group of icons in my system tray were not nearly as many as they used to be. 

I finally just reinstalled both programs and got my icons back.  All seemed to be fixed until I tried to download some photos from my camera's memory card.  Then I started getting all kinds of error messages saying other programs were not installed and it couldn't find all kinds of files.  And, these programs didn't even have anything to do with cameras or photos.  By now, I was more than miffed.  I was downright angry.
I finally just did a system restore from the day before all of this started, and I eventually got things back to normal.  And, yes, I was right.  There were two other icons that were missing. 

I guess you are asking yourself how this has anything to do with the 3% problem.  Obviously other people were having similar issues.  Here's the clincher.  My husband has the exact same antivirus and spyware program on his computer that I have on mine.  His computer is hooked up to the same router for Internet service.  It sits only 6 feet away from my computer.  His program automatically updates just like mine does.  However, his program must have missed the 10 minute window that it took the spyware tech support to realize there was a problem and to fix it.  My computer just happened to update during that 10 minute time frame.  He didn't have any problems whatsoever and had the latest definitions this morning when he checked it.

I live a charmed life!