OK, here's my sad story: This morning I could not access any sites on my computer, kept getting IE error messages saying something like "google.ihc is not an item." (Google was my homepage, ya see!) So I called HP tech support (my PC is a Compaq that I've had less than a year; I'll add the model and serial numbers later if that helps).
So the tech guy talked me through the steps of resetting things, so now everything works. Then he told me that he thinks I have a virus that is affecting many computers and causing eventual crashing. He said that for $99 I could have a tech guy at HP remote-access and tune up my computer to rid it of this virus and make it run faster.
Does this sound legit? $99 is 1/4 to 1/3 of what I paid for the entire PC! I mentioned that I don't have a credit card, so the tech guy just told me to call later, dunno how I would pay for this tune-up. What do you guys think? I am suspicious, maybe rightly so, maybe not.
I think this is a script problem, basically something that causes IE to stop running scripts, one way or another. An update could have caused this. Did you update any part of Windows or IE right before this started happening?
I had a look and found
this. Here's what you should try:
We tried some isolations of the plugins that had to do with Trend Micro and Guarded ID. By disabling the following, we were able to get this script error to go away.
"Trend Micro Toolbar" and "TSToolbar BHO"
This is a variation of the same thing:
It seems to be the Trend Micro "Page Rating" feature!!
I had three computers that suffered the problem this morning!! After much head-scratching I found that when I moved the mouse pointer over the desired Google search site, that I would get the IE script error, and not have access to the site. However, if I went to a sub-catagory and clicked on it, I could access that site. Working with the three computers, I pin-pointed the page rating feature as the problem. It can be disabled on the Trend Micro toolbar.
This would indicate that it's a problem caused directly or indirectly by TrendMicro. If you continue to have problems, it might be wise to replace TrendMicro with AVG. Also, do NOT install toolbars and other additions by TrendMicro, AVG or others.
And also, it might be wise to give Firefox a try. It's less sensitive to this kind of thing.
And no, you shouldn't pay HP money because they should have known that this is a scripting problem, not a virus. If you continue to have problems or need help, just give me a shout and I'll do what I can to help you fix this.