Stupid interrupting starfish grmmbl.

[hazliya]

So, I'm having this issue when I use google to search and click on a link. The link will then take me to an unrelated spam-filled random search engine designed to wreck my system.

Malwarebytes' scan turns up nothing. Can anyone help?

Comments

[mariaklob.livejournal.com]

WARNING THIS MAY BE COMPLETELY UNHELPFUL.

So, the last time I had a problem like this it was something that had edited my Hosts file. Information on what it does is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosts_file. Anti-spyware programs use it to map 'evil domain names' to something innocuous like 127.0.0.1. If spyware gets a hold of it, it can map google.com to something terrible.

In XP, it's under C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\. I don't think it has an extension, it's just 'Hosts', but you can open it in Notepad. Search for 'google.com' and delete every entry you find there. After you save this, you may want to set the file to be read-only.

The hosts file overrides the computer's normal method of looking up the IP for a domain name. So when you delete google's entry (if it's there), you tell your computer 'ignore this hard-coded evil IP and go look up the real one.'

Let me know if this works/if Google is in there.

[mariaklob.livejournal.com]

Oh, but if Google works and it's the resulting links that are corrupted, then the Hosts probably isn't the problem. Ignore me!