Possible Virus?

[JLS]

My firefox browser has been acting strange the past week or so. I have numerous tab windows opened and sometimes when I toggle between tabs, it freezes and it takes a little while until it switches to the other tab. My computer doesn't freeze up because I can click on other running programs or do whatever else on my system. It's just firefox. Now, I just received an add-ons may be causing problems pop-up window that says: Firefox has determined that the following add-ons are known to cause stability or security problems: inside the box it says MetaStream 3 Plugin 3.2.2.26. To the right of that it says blocked. At the bottom of the pop-up window it says: these add-ons have a high risk of causing stability or security problems and have been blocked ,but a restart is required to disable them completely. At the bottom of this message there is a restart and a cancel button.

I keep this message up on my computer because I didn't know if I should cancel it out or not. I did a search on my system for metastream and there is a couple files in a viewpoint folder on my c drive that I am not sure what it is.


I use win xp pro and firefox 3.5.7. Any suggestions on how to proceed?

[fink]

Virus wouldn't be the first thing I'd think of. Temporarily disable those addons and see if the problems dissapear. May also want to reinstall firefox (or upgrade to latest version) as well.

3.5.7...

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-older.html

3.6 avail from the firefox main page.

[JLS]

Hi, Fink. I upgraded to firefox 3.6. I installed the new version in a new folder. There is the old version and the new 3.6 version listed in revo uninstaller. Can I unintall the old version listed in that program? Also, I have both versions listed in add/remove programs in the control panel. The size listed in add/remove programs says 28 MB but there isn't a size listed next to my new version. Should there be? Also, can I delete the folder that contains my old version in windows explorer or will I loose my profile if I do?

I still don't know why I received that MetaStream 3 plugin pop-up window and if it was a possible virus.

[fink]

Here's what the Firefox site says about that plugin (compatibility issues)

http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/forum/1/571763

I'm not sure if you will lose any files/folders/profiles/etc for both versions if you uninstall 3.5. Both versions store certain folders in other places besides the regular programs folder so they may be sharing
certain files. If no one else here has ever tried that you may want to ask at the firefox forums linked to above.

[foxy]

Profiles are stored in C:\ etc\Application Data, not in the program files. That includes your extensions too, so if you uninstall one, it's uninstalled for every version of FF thereafter.

For further questions, the best place is forums.mozillazine.org.

[jerryctx]

I received the same warning about a week ago. I restarted, then went (in FF) to Tools > Add-Ons and uninstalled Metastream. No problems since.