Chinese Google? Help!

[Pacifist Patriot]

My laptop is an endless source of frustration. I don't use it any differently than my PC, but for some reason it is constantly riddled with malware while the PC continues to plug along uninfected. I went through a really frustrating time with this laptop in early March and here we are one month later and it's got something that seems even worse.

For weeks I couldn't get Google to even load it's main page. Now it loads, but it's in Chinese. Switching the character encoding back to Unicode-8 didn't even help. It's just gibberish.

I have more anti-malware software programs on my laptop than all other programs combined I think. I ran full Malware Bytes and AVG Antivirus scans. They each found something, but the laptop is still slow as molasses in January and bringing up Google in Chinese. (It doesn't seem to be doing what the "Chinese virus" of July 2010 did)

I use Mozilla Firefox as my browser, have oodles of virus checking software programs and don't know what to do next. Any ideas?

[blogslut]

1. Naturally, it's hard to say without seeing the machine in person

I would be inclined to suggest that you wipe the hard drive and start over.

[Pacifist Patriot]

2. I was afraid someone was going to say that.

[pscot]

3. This sorted mine out

http://onecare.live.com/site/en-us/default.htm?s_cid=sah

Run the safety scanner. If you have a bug, this will find it. It takes a long time, but it seems to work.

[Pacifist Patriot]

4. Thanks! I think I'll try that before resorting to wiping the hard drive.