Attacked by a virus
One of the computer repairs I did was on a laptop I had sold a friend. She acquired a virus that blocked access to the Internet. The window would just pop up and say “virus detected. Purchase our scanner and we will fix your computer.” I had lost a lot of data one time because something similar had happened to me and I had to run a restore disk on mine causing me to lose numerous pictures, videos, and documents that were on there. She brought the laptop to me and asked if I could fix it without losing all her stuff she had on there. She had very little money to pay but it was a challenge.
The first things first
The first thing I tried was to run system restore. The virus blocked this of course. It would not let me open the security folder either. So I rebooted to safe mode and was able to run system restore on it from there. I went back to the earliest date possible, which was close to 3 months back. This had no effect whatsoever and still could not access the Internet. I looked through various files and could not find anything, they are great as disguising as something else. Computer repairs are not always easy.
My other options
I downloaded a different browser from my desktop PC to a disc and installed it on the laptop computer. This did nothing either so I tried something I never knew they made. I searched online for a virus removal disc and found one for $5 plus $2 shipping. I tried to run it but the laptop had an anti-virus program installed which kept it from running. I could not access the program or delete it. I finally rebooted in save mode, deleted the anti-virus program, and ran the virus removal disc. After spinning around in an endless loop for about 30 minutes, I figured it froze up and rebooted the computer.
The final results
Finally, after all of this trial and error, the computer was able to connect to the Internet and all her pictures and stuff were still ok. The only side effect was that it knocked out the wireless card somehow. She was happy with it even though she had to be tethered by the wire. She paid me what little she could afford and I learned that If one direction will not work, sometimes it helps to back up and take off in a new direction.