This happens on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. I'll search for something. I get a page of links. I click on one of the links. About half the time, the search engine behaves normally, and takes me to the link. But about half the time, it doesn't. It takes me to some page advertising various commercial sites. When I open the pulldown menu for going backwards, it says I'm at "redirect." What's this all about?

I'll guess some aggressive advertisers have messed with something.

I think it must be a virus.

Yep--it was likely caused by a virus. Run a good thorough virus/spyware check.

The virus may be gone, by the way, but the changes it made may remain. Such redirections are usually stored in a file named hosts which for most Windows users is located in the Windows\system32\drivers\etc\ directory.

You can open it with Notepad and see if there are any redirections listed...

Jeff/CompGuy

Got to Hosts and all it says is this:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost

127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com

No luck with a spybot search. Doing a full system scan now.

If the redirect isn't done by the hosts file, you have a more serious problem. I recommend downloading/installing/running SuperAntiSpyware from
www.superantispyware.com

Despite it's terrible name, it's one of the best programs to get rid of this problem--and the full working product is available for a free download.

Also try MailwareBytes:
www.malwarebytes.org

Jeff/CompGuy

I'll give them a try. No luck with a complete Avast viruscan.

SuperAntiSpyware fixed it!

Great!

Jeff/CompGuy

I spoke too soon -- I ran the program, rebooted, everything was fine, but after about 20 minutes it went back to redirecting everything. I'll try it once more.

Try running SuperAntiSpyware in safe mode, and be sure to do the complete scan.

Try the program at www.malwarebytes.org too!

Jeff

quote:

Originally posted by CompGuy:
Try running SuperAntiSpyware in safe mode, and be sure to do the complete scan.

Try the program at www.malwarebytes.org too!

Jeff

That's the one that works for most people, just like you wrote.

Boot in safe mode so anything that's going to load into memory and make it not go away, hasn't loaded.

Run Malware Bytes and re-boot normally.

That usually does it.

Just a note for someone with an older OS that isn't supported by the current anti-virus software. ClamWin still works on Windows 98x, while the rest have stopped supporting it and won't run on anything but XP or newer. FREE http://www.clamwin.com/

This turns out to be a horrid little virus. Running SuperAntiSpyware in safe mode didn't help. Actually, it had the same result as running it in non-safe mode, which is even weirder than it not working at all. It worked once. After I ran the program and rebooted, I got one search, and then it went back to redirecting.


There seem to be all sorts of solutions suggested out there on the net, including one called ComboFix. Anyone have any experience with that?

Someone else suggested running Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware in that order, so I'm going to try that next.

I just tried running a search in Chrome instead of Firefox, and that seemed to be OK -- at least so far.

I've used combofix--it's surely worth a try. It's free.

Again, try Malwarebytes. If SuperAntiSpyware fails, that's the next one I'd select. It's also free to clean out your computer, although it doesn't provide realtime protection.

Also, try System Restore. Use it to roll your computer back to a time before you had this problem, then run the antispyware programs again.

Jeff/CompGuy

Now, suddenly, everything is working OK.

And now it's not (on Firefox). This on-again off-again thing is really crazy.