Unistalled Ad-aware. Re-installed 8.1. serveral times before it worked. Finally got it to start scanning and a message popped up that it found a malicious program running in the background that I would be able to fix when the scan is done. The scan then disappears and I get the dreaded "failed to connect to service" message.

I have tried the instructions on the forum to use Hijack and it tells me "windows cannot access the specified device, path, or file. You may not have the appropriate permissions to access the item." which is the error I get when I try to run any spyware program. What ever this is has disabled everything I use.

What am I doing wrong?

Hi there,

Please save this file to your desktop. Double-click on it to run a scan. When it's finished, there will be a log called Win32kDiag.txt on your desktop. Please open it with notepad and post the contents here.

not to hijack this thread but I am having the same problem - can't even run "Hijack This" it closes during scan.

Can I do the same or start new thread?

Hi chichyo,

Please start a new thread for your problem. We deal cases by following one system/one thread policy here

Edit: Seems that you already created a topic.