Floating point division by zero?

[Ed-the-Ted]

Hi, Newbie and Thickie here, all in one!

I am currently in Egypt and using an Etisalat USB modem to access the Internet. It's pretty rubbishy in my estimation, but better than the available ADSL (whatever that means). I have to use Google Chrome, as it's the only service which I can use for a Blog I keep.

The problem I'm having is (apart from it running very slowly, sometimes but not others) is that the speed graph on the statistics page for the modem keeps stopping running (it's still there, but it's as if the clock has stopped) and then it makes an awful noise and a string of pop-ups appear bearing the words 'Floating point division by zero' (110 of these together, the last time!) and the graph (showing the speed of the connection) races along on a flat line before starting to work properly again! (It won't change page in the meantime.) At the same time, the Etisalat homepage appears, over the top of the page I'm on.

I'm using a VAIO VGN-FS285B. I know that it probably came out of the Ark, and I bought it 2nd hand three years ago, but it's all I have!

Can anyone out there tell the me if this is likely to be a fault with the laptop? (Is it terminal?) Or could it be a fault with the modem or the provider's gear? I'm clueless, and in Egypt the people here who say that they know about these things are invariably liars who are out to take your hard-earned whether they do any good or not!

Please help if you can?

It's just happened again, so I've taken a couple of photos of the screen so as you can see what I'm on about.

The first pic shows a few of the pop-ups, and the second shows what was happening while I was writing this, then the flat line bit about in the middle, and then the sudden jump in speed to a whopping 150kbps, or thereabouts.

That reminds me, I was downloading a word document from my sister, and the downloader thingy was telling me that it was downloading at however many kbps, while the Etisalat statistics screen was telling me that it was downloading it at 10 times that speed! What's all that about?

These things cannot be normal, surely?

Ed.

[nimbystripes]

This looks like a virus to me. Don't you think?

[Ed-the-Ted]

I've run 'LukeFilewalker' from Avira, and it says that there are 10 Warnings.These are documents which require passwords, which I don't know. So I've sent them all to the Recycle Bin. No difference apparent as yet!