Question possible virus. What can run with Defender + Spybot?

[blahcomp222]

Believe it or not, I still use Internet Explorer 11 most of the time. Some websites just won't run on IE11 and so I use chrome sometimes, but I just always stuck with IE11 for some reason. I'll probably switch to Chromium or chrome though (I'm getting used to Chrome since I've been basically forced to use it the past few days and the speed is better overall so IDK why I was so stubborn to switch.

Almost a year ago, I got something that was causing IE Homepage to open to some webpage not Google, it would basically open to a black page and something about microsoft in the URL. I researched it and was tricky to resolve and could mess something up in the settings, but anyway it eventually went away.
I run Defender and Spybott scans every day like OCD. Only once every 4 or 5 years or so Defender finds and re solves something. A few days ago it found something. I resolved it but since then, my IE11 is painfully slow to open and was redirecting too but now it's not redirecting anymore, it's just extremely slow.

In conjunction with Defender finding something (but said was resolved) at the same time as my IE11 acting funny, I think I might have picked up some spyware or something.

What else can I run that won't mess up and possibly disable Defender? Something free. I might actually donate though if it fixes.
I think I've used hijack this in the past but not sure if that caused a problem with Defender. About 8 weeks before I had a problem with defender turning itself off, I had downloaded malwarebytes, ran it, and then removed it in control panel, but malwarebytes might have caused the Defender problem (which was solved by uninstalling Spybot in ctrl panel and then reinstalling spybot and that fixed Defender from turning OFF towards the end of scans).

BTW I am extremely safe online or at least like to think I am, I never click anything sketchy, I alt ctr dlt to get away from that if that's the only option besides having to click something, I update and scan Defender and Spybot at least once a day, I didn't do anything out of the ordinary when this happened to IE11 and when Defender said it found and fixed something.

 

[Tolis_GR]

You can try Malwarebytes. If there something, it will pick it up. Your symptoms look like that your browser redirects you to a crypto-mining process. You can open task manager and check how your resources are utilized. If you see any suspect process in hugh usage, search it on the internet to make sure, open it's containing folder and right after you kill it, delete the folder. It would also be helpful to run CCleaner and clear registries and any traces and re-install IE. I suggest you start with Malwarebytes though before anything else.

 

[blahcomp222]

well I did the malwarebytes free trial of premium but full scan shows no threats. The only thing wrong is still IE11 is slow to open, it hasn't redirected to anything since before I made this thread. As mentioned it did this in the past, it would redirect to some blank page (the url when googled showed others have similar thing but didn't sound serious), but it's just slow to open.

I'm finally getting used to chrome. The only reason I used to not stick to chrome is because I'm OCD about clearing cookies and cache etc in between almost every webpage I go to, not hiding anything, it's just I always felt weird/distracted knowing the previous website wants to track your online browsing. With IE11 I have Internet Options shortcut on desktop and would just clear temp files, history etc with that, but with chrome it was becoming a bit of a PITA, many more keystrokes to get to the Advanced Settings where cache, history, files etc can be deleted, and so I actually found it quicker to just fully remove Chrome in control Panel and then reinstall it whenever I ran into a website that IE11 couldn't run.

But now I figured out how to put a shortcut in the Chrome Favorites Bar directly to the Chrome privacy clearing setting.
Overall I always thought Chrome was safer, but it does feel safer to fully remove and reinstall chrome rather than clear history in its settings but maybe it doesn't matter.
There is some things Googling says IE11 is actually safer for than Chrome but overall Chrome is probably much safer, not to mention it's much faster and there are many websites IE11 simply can not run properly.

It' seems strange Windows even includes IE11 being how shjtty it performs sometimes.


So now it's simply slow to open IE11, and my PC has great specs (i7-4790k, SSD, 16BG, etc).

I'll stick with Chrome now. I might just save all my IE11 favorites and other settings in a folder and reinstall IE11 unless there's other suggestions?
thanks

 

[mdd1963]

I had read that Spybot's detection ratios and malware definitions updating began to become 'spotty' (i.e., near abysmal) , beginning about 4-6 years ago...

If you want something free, go Kaspersky AV free

 

[mdd1963]

Internet Explorer?

Honestly.....?

IE is just about dead, and most likely use it (or Edge) just long enough to load Chrome, Firefox, or Opera.

Double check your IE add-ons, or perhaps even your AV might be excessively interfering with throughput during browser startup? (Disable /stop AV, or remove the add on to test)

Experimented with Security settings (default Medium high) to lesser?