Re: OT-internet redirects?

Posted by Howard H. on February 19, 2007 at 06:59:36 from (164.58.210.24):

In Reply to: OT-internet redirects? posted by Dave from MN on February 19, 2007 at 05:11:56:

You most likely have a real problem.

If you are getting website redirects, it means something malicious has gained control of the part of Windows that allows it to talk to the Internet.

You might try an online antivirus scan at:

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

But a lot of this garbage these days is not technically a virus, since it may not spread on it's own. SO, if it is something that was "invited" (installed by your BIL) onto your PC, antivirus won't find it.

If you are very lucky, you might see it listed in "add/remove programs" in your control panel. There are a surprising # of pretty harmful parasite programs that actually list themselves in there. Things like wildtangent and zango can be removed this way.

You might also try downloading and running Microsoft's latest - Windows Defender and see what it says.

The bad news is - there aren't many good malware removers that I've seen - Adaware used to be OK, but it has gone down hill, for example, many of the other free ones actually cause more trouble than they help.

If you are handy on a PC, you might run "msconfig" and check the startup list of programs and services. Many malware are listed here for launch at startup.

Also, you might check your hosts file located in C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc (assuming you are running Windows XP or 2000) - it should be empty except for a few documentation lines and one local loopback entry. If it has a bunch of entries for Norton, Sophos, Mcafee, etc, delete all those out - they are preventing you from actually getting to those sites...

A lot of this type of junk actually modifies Windows itself, so if none of these steps help, your best bet is to reinstall Windows. You can install a clean version without losing all your information. You can email me if you have questions on that.

Good luck,
Howard

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