Google redirect virus...

[laylah]

any simple solutions? I am NOT technical, don't know up from down except how to navigate. I have run my anti-spyware (malware, avg, spybot) and nothing shows. Would someone please help me with this problem?

Thanks in advance!

Jenn

[unc70]

1. What behavior are you seeing?

It has become increasingly difficult for me to tell the difference between Google and malware. Their primary search page is an obtuse monster.

Give us a few details of what you are seeing? Your environment, how you are searching, browser and addons, when you first noticed this, etc. There are so many hijacks of searching plus poisoning of the Google caches that almost anything could be happening.

I will check around to see if anything is going on in general today.

[laylah]

3. More often than not,

I'll do a google search but get an error message something like this page has been moved, then i am redirected to something totally unrelated. if i use the back arrow a couple of times, i usually end up where i wanted to be in the first place.

thanks!

jenn

[defendandprotect]

7. This is exactly what was happening to me . . . google browser was infected .. .

I went back to Internet Explorer -- and since that delivered me finally into

hands of "Antivirus Live" ... presume IE is also now infected!

AVG was reporting that its own infection finally --

and Zone Alarm infected --

Or not? Evidently may be false reports?

I think in order to avoid more catastrophe, I would have had to have access to a

second computer because it seems anything you bring into the computer is immediately

infected???!!!

Hope you'll be OK . . . but that's what happened to me --

Trying to find out if moving to Linux will clear all of this out --

and if I can download from this computer . . .

Otherwise guess I have to download onto a disc from another computer????

[trotsky]

2. It might be something very simple.

I assume you're using Windows? If so, navigate to this folder:

C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\

Look for a file called hosts. Double-click it. Windows will likely prompt you to pick a program to open it with - choose Notepad. Once you open it, go to the bottom of the file. After all the lines that start with a # sign, you really shouldn't need anything in there other than one that says "localhost". Delete any other lines that are in there after that. Especially if one is there for www.google.com.

[laylah]

4. i'll try that, thanks! nt

[DemReadingDU]

5. oh wow

I looked in that file, and after localhost, there is...

# Start of entries inserted by Spybot - Search & Destroy
# This list is Copyright 2000-2008 Safer Networking Limited

...there must be a thousand entries of sites...

# End of entries inserted by Spybot - Search & Destroy

**************************

So can I leave these thousand sites in this hosts file because Spybot put them here?

[ConsAreLiars]

6. Those are not the problem.

They are a list of baddies that just get blocked and yield a 'not found' result. You might want to update using the copyrighter's name in a search engine once the redirect problem is fixed or using Spybot S&D if the current version has that function.