Need Computer Help Fast

[GoReds33]

My computer just started something crazy. Everytime I search something on Google, and I click on one of the links, it sends me to another search engine, or one of those phony websites. I suppose that I have a virus, or something of the sort on my computer. Any advice on how to fix this problem is greatly appreciated.

[MrCinatit]

That sounds quite a bit like the nasty little bug I got a couple of months ago - I had reinstalled firefox and run every anti virus program I had, and it only seemed to get worse (in fact, I believe Norton never did detect anything wrong). Google and any other search engine were unusable, and many times any page I clicked on resulted into a pop up ad and a HUGE lag (despite me having pop ups blocked). Even IE was affected.
I am sure there are better things to do, but I ended up reformatting my hard drive (partially to get rid of the virus and partially because it had been three years since I had last reformatted).
I've had no problems since then.

[Hap]

Spybot sometimes can detect things that Norton or Ad-Aware does not detect. However, you may have one of those trojans or worms that has found its way into your registry and affecting your winlogon. In my case, Spybot detected the virtumonde trojan and it said that it was removing it, but it would rewrite itself to the hard drive every time the system would reboot.

Sounds like reformatting may be your only option.

[IslandRed]

What have you run against it so far? At a minimum, I'd throw your antivirus program at it, along with Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware (both have free versions).

One other possibility, and this happened to me awhile back, is that a DNS server upstream from your computer has been hacked. (DNS, for the uninitiated, means "domain name service" -- it's what translates easy-to-read things like "redszone.com" into the actual IP address of the server.) This will generally fix itself before long when the server is refreshed from a "good" source. I don't know if this is what you have, since you didn't say if anything was affected other than Google search results.

Also check your HOSTS file (on XP, it's in C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc) and see if a bunch of garbage has been written to it. HOSTS is like a local DNS override and many malware programs stick stuff in there to redirect 'Net traffic.

[GoReds33]

I have NOD on my computer. I was going to get a couple more to go after it, but it won't let me go on maccaffe, or whatever that website is.

Every search engine I can think of does this.

If anybody can provide a link to some of these programs that would be great. I don't know if it would work, but I defenitly can't search for them.

Thanks for all the help.

[Roy Tucker]

FWIW, I've had good luck with the free version of AVG.

http://free.avg.com/ww.download-avg-...s-free-edition

Sysinternals has a good suite of diagnostic tools, particularly RootkitRevealer (bought by MS relatively recently, hence the URL)...

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/s...c5a693683.aspx

[GAC]

I've been using Spy Sweeper for years. I love it.

www.webroot.com

It could be that you've picked up a variation of a browser hijacker called coolwebsearch. They are nasty.

CWShredder is an excellent free program that can identify and remove them if they exist.

http://www.download.com/CWShredder-C...-10457746.html

[Spring~Fields]

What everyone said above and maybe this one link below could be a quick, easy and cheap way to find or to fix, time wise.

http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm

Malicious Software Removal Tool

http://www.microsoft.com/security/ma...tapm=A51S01B01

Did you try to restore your browser defaults? and to lock them?

Let us know what you find out and what worked to fix it so we all can learn from it.

[GoReds33]

I tried a few of the links provided yesterday, but they would all come up to a page telling me the webpage wasn't responding. I got fed up, and sent it in. Part of my problem was that my NOD subscription wasn't up to date.

I do want to thank you all a lot for your help.