What's going on with my browsers??

Question

I have firefox and IE. Whenever I do a search and click on one of the results, it redirects me to something else. So I figured I'd download an antivirus. I wanted to download N O D 32, but every time I do, my browser closes... even by just spelling that word (n o d). What's going on? What can I do? Thanks!

Answer 1

You indeed have malware.  Try downloading and running that antivirus (I won't use its name -- sometimes just the appearance of a name on a page will trigger the punishment) in Safe Mode With Networking.  Safe Mode With Networking often prevents malware from protecting itself.

I suggest you also download Ad-Aware 2008 and Spybot S&D (they’re free), install them, update them and run them. If any of the above (or any anti-malware, for that matter) doesn’t seem to be able to run properly or get rid of everything it reports finding, try running it again in Safe Mode.

Also, turn off System Restore to evict any copies of bad stuff that might be lurking there.  

To get into Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Networking:

1. Log out and reboot your machine.

2. When the machine starts the reboot sequence, press the F8 key repeatedly.

3. Select Safe Mode or Safe Mode with Networking from the resulting menu.

4. When the login screen comes up, log in as Administrator.  By default, Administrator has no password.

5. The machine will continue booting, but the Windows desktop will look different.  You might not be able to see the Internet, for instance.

6. When you're finished, log out and reboot back into normal mode.

Note that even if the anti-malware programs get rid of the malware, they may not be able to reverse the effects.  Search the Web for possible fixes.

Update and run everything regularly, not just when you think you already have malware.

Good luck.

Answer 2

It could be a program or a virus doing that! Open task manager by hitting Ctrl,Alt and Delete and go to processes and google some of thoes processes to make sure none of them are viruses running!