September eleventh (nine eleven) triggered problem?

[Harry99]

(Unsure where to post this)

Coincidentally or not, on Sept 11, 2010, my laptop suffered its only file corruption.

Spybot 1.6.0.30 with current file updates finds nothing.

On that day I visited, only reading, a web page selling Smuckers products. Info from that page was copied into Powermarks, overlaying about 2 per cent of the records. PM is open most of the time.

On the previous day I visited for the first time a site with unusual content: wwwDOTsecret-basesDOTcoDOTuk .

No new damage noticed since.

Windows 98, IE 6.

Is there likely a software infection of some sort still present on my laptop?

[bitman]

Though it may simply have been some sort of program or operating system glitch, which seems likely since you've perfectly described a potential collision between two open programs, there are always other possibilities.

To me it seems more likely that the Smuckers web site may not be supporting Internet Explorer 6 any longer, since this is becoming common with the security risks and the limitations this outdated browser places on web developers. In that case, it's always possible that your obviously outdated and unsupported browser and operating system could have conflicted with the third-party program resulting in the file corruption.

This is why anyone would recommend getting rid of the Windows 98 operating system, which Microsoft has not supported since June 2006 if I recall correctly. You are in an unsupportable situation where no one can be certain what issues might occur.

Rob

[Harry99]

Thank you. Yes, the system is long out of date. The old hardware precludes installing newer versions.