Hi!  I'm a brand new user and poster.

 

Last night, I finally knuckled under and permitted Win8 DVD Player to install its update.  For those of you who don't know, Win8 is the first MS-OS in a looooong time that doesn't bundle a DVD-reading software.  So, you have to get a 3rd party piece of software in order to play DVDs on your computer.  Among the free programs out there, Win8 DVD Player was purported to be the best.  However, it's been bugging me for weeks to install its recent upgrade.  I tend to wait until I have a few minutes to pay attention to allow those.  Good thing I did, apparently.

 

So, after the upgrade began, my Windows Defender popped up and wanted me to confirm an installation from a "program downloaded from the internet" that didn't have any identifier.  Thinking it was for Win8 DVD Player, I permitted it.  Seemed legit.  Then, Windows Defender wanted to do it AGAIN.  This time, I denied it.  Good thing, too.  Turns out, the first installation redirected all internet traffic through a proxy server (which I've since discovered is a network address that's ON my computer).  The second one would have, apparently, locked me out of being able to change the proxy server via the GUI.  

 

I found a fix online that required hands-on registry editing.  I'm not comfortable with that.  Besides, who's to say that the original hackers didn't publish a fake fix, and that the manual registry alteration wasn't their goal all along?  Who me?  Paranoid?

 

So, on a friend's advice, I downloaded Webroot SecureAnywhere.  Despite the original reason, I'm glad I did.  I have a few other less-than-perfectly-protected devices in my house, and now I feel more protected.  However, it didn't find the hack that redirected my internet traffic through a proxy server.  In the meantime, I had manually unchecked the "use a proxy server" box in the MS-OS Internet/LAN Settings, and it hasn't reset itself (like others have reported elsewhere in these forums).  So....without having done anything more elegant or thorough than unchecking the proxy server box in the LAN settings....it's fixed?

 

I'm hesitant to declare victory.  Any advice?

 

FYI, based on a perusal of these forums, I've already read the following:

 

http://forums.techguy.org/web-email/1088333-proxy-settings-ie-10-a.html

 

and this:

 

https://community.webroot.com/t5/Webroot-SecureAnywhere-Internet/Proxy-Issue/m-p/48522/highlight/true#M1595