Search Engine Urgent Help

[ItsDave]

Hi, I'm currently on my Dad's laptop and he's asking for some help. Whenever I or he searches for something in google, take for exmaple OCVC College which I did, it will bring up a white page and re-direct you to either a games website or another unknown search engine. Now I've noticed at the top of the address bar it says makingallclear in it when it redirects you to the page and quickly change, so I googled this name, the search didn't get redirected and I found an information page saying that it was founded on the 25th of March '10. Now my Dad says this was about the time it started "hijacking" if you will, these pages. Any advice or help please?

+REP to any help or decent advice as it is kind of annoying.

Edit: Virtumonde has been found on his anti-virus, any more help?

[Cyklops]

If your in IE8 click on the drop down arrow and choose another search engine. See what happens then.

[xxMATTGxx]

Virtumondo is a Trojan horse.

I suggest you do a complete scan of your computer to see if it will delete. Another thing I would suggest you do is download: Spybot - Search & Destroy & Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. (Run scans on these applications as well). What Anti-virus software are you running?


Download Links:
Spybot - Search & Destroy
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam-download.php

[ItsDave]

Spybot Search and Destroy. I found Virtumonde and Right Media. Deleted them both. It works better now, but now google's in German, and I have changed the settings, repeatedly back to English and when I type www.google.co.uk into the address bar, it directs me to a google searched page saying the 404 couldn't be found, strange. Thanks Matt. And Cyklops it's quite an old version of IE. But thank you for your replies.

[GommeInc]

Spybot isn't an anti-virus last time I checked :S What you need is either AVG or Microsoft Security Essentials (the latter usually being a whole lot better than AVG).

[xxMATTGxx]

Spybot isn't an anti-virus last time I checked :S What you need is either AVG or Microsoft Security Essentials (the latter usually being a whole lot better than AVG).

It isn't but it would delete things that may cause trouble. I did say before that he should scan his computer then suggested other things he can also use.

[ItsDave]

It isn't but it would delete things that may cause trouble. I did say before that he should scan his computer then suggested other things he can also use.

My Dad doesn't download anything. So this SpyBot is the only thing he has.

[ItsDave]

Thanks Matt for that Malware link. Currently found 3 'somethings' and 48 miuntes on still going. Cheers.

[Jordy]

The virus might of tampered with your Hosts file I'm guessing?

Open up Notepad then Open the Hosts file within it.

You'll find it here; C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\
Make sure you're viewing all files not just .txt files. Open the file called Hosts

Then wipe out what's currently in it. C/P the below into it and save.

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 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

127.0.0.1 localhost
::1 localhost