Something has commandeered my IE (1 Viewer)

[Todd K]

This problem is on my computer at work, which is connected to the Internet through our office's network.

Something happened today that made my Internet Explorer go haywire. Whenever I first start the program after restarting my computer, the status bar just reads "detecting proxy settings" forever, then finally connects to my homepage. Everything then acts as normal, but I can't visit any search engines. If I type in, for example, www.google.com the lower status bar will say "opening page www.www.google.com.com" and after about 20 seconds it will take me to "The gigantic search engine at com.net."

Obviously something is telling IE to behave in this way, but I don't know what. I have looked in the "add/remove" programs for anything suspicious and found nothing, and I've run AdAware and System Mechanic and they didn't help.

Has anyone ever seen this before?

Todd

 

[Romier S]

, the status bar just reads "detecting proxy settings" forever, then finally connects to my homepage.

In IE, go into Tools>Internet Options and then click on the "Connections" tab. At the bottom right you should see a "LAN Settings" button. Click on it. In this window make sure you *DO NOT* have "Automatically Detect settings" checked off. Also make sure you have no settings for a proxy server set there unless you actually use a proxy.

That should hopefully clear that issue right up for you.

 

[Todd K]

Romier, Thanks -- that seems to have worked. At least, I restarted the computer, and then opened IE, and my homepage loaded right away.

I don't know how it could have gotten this way, since I hadn't made any changes to the computer.

I still, however, have the search engine problem, where it won't allow me to type in "www.altavista.com" or "www.google.com" without taking me to this weird com.net web portal page.

 

[JamesHl]

I would say look in your hosts file, but I'm not sure if that's the problem here. It would be good to write off just in case, though.

It sounds like it's going through the steps that it would normally go through to try and resolve something, but it is being blocked in some way, so that's why I would guess hosts would be a good way of doing that...

 

[John Watson]

From a few days ago, possibly helpful?

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=160639

 

[Todd K]

Yes, sounds like almost exactly the same problem. I had a similar problem on my home computer a few months ago, but the solution was much easier -- when I went into the control panel under "add/remove programs," the malicious entity was right there, and removeable with a click of a button. This time it's not so easy.

And I already ran AdAware and it didn't do anything.

Also note that I am running Windows 98 at work, and and not being redirected to the same site as Scooter in the above mentioned thread.

 

[John_Berger]

I already ran AdAware and it didn't do anything.

Lavasoft just recently (the past week or two) released a new release of the software. It's still version six, but it's something like build 181. The newest reference file is only 5 days old. Maybe this situation is detected in the newer reference file. This assumes that you don't have the newest binaries and reference file, of course.

 

[Todd K]

OK, I'm back at work now and have solved the problem thanks to all your help.

The problem did in fact lie in the hosts file.

 

[JamesHl]

The new version of adaware scans your hosts file as well, I've noticed.

 

[Todd K]

Ah yes, I see that now. I didn't have that checked previously.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

There is also a new trojan beginning to make the rounds that alters your DNS settings and makes all your DNS lookups go via some third party servers. You also get popups and stuff because of that.

You'd think people would learn not to use IE and get either http://www.opera.com or http://www.mozilla.org but I guess not...

At the VERY LEAST, go to Windowsupdate and download the security patches that make these trojans ineffective, they've been available for weeks and months.