Bizarre Internet Explorer problem--help!

[Buttercup]

I just read your edit, Tsyr. I'm printing all the instructions from the Symantec site now. I've long thought that I needed to learn about the Windows registry, and it looks like I'm about to get my baptism by fire. I'll be back after I've tried all the stuff they recommend (which includes editing said registry). If I screw it up and render this machine unusable, at least we've got another one. So, I'll be back later with an update.

Wish me luck.

 

[Buttercup]

Ok, I did everything Symantec told me to do. There were no trojans or virii on this machine. There was nothing untoward in the registry. The IP my machine was using to connect to Google was 216.239.39.100. Note that only the last section is wrong. So I just went ahead and set 216.239.39.99 as my home page, and now I can use Google again.

I still don't know what caused the Google IP to change like that, and so, I will still worry that I've got some malware on this machine that I haven't yet found. But at least it's functioning acceptably for the moment.

If you have more ideas, feel free to mention them. Thanks!

 

[d20Dwarf]

Well Tsyr, I did that. Ad-Aware found and removed over 50 things.

Only 50? I just ran it and removed 608 objects! :O

 

[MJEggertson]

You may wish to run a search for a file called 'hosts' (no file extension). It exists in different places on different systems, always under some subfolder of your Windows system folder. That file allows you to bypass dns lookup for a domain name, so for example you can specify that google.com is always at 127.0.0.1, or whatever.

If you find a line similar to:

216.239.39.100 googole.com

you may wish to remove it. That line will always force your system to look for google at that address, instead of looking it up on the net dns registries. My guess is something like that is happening. You'll need to reboot or manually flush your server cache for any changes you made to take effect.

That information may also be in a file called 'lmhosts'.

 

[Buttercup]

Interesting. I actually found two files named hosts and one named Imhosts. IMhosts appeared to be a read me file created by Microsoft, which explained what the hosts files were for. Both hosts files had an IP for yahoo and for google. The google one was the non-functional IP. I assume the Yahoo one was for the page from easter 2001, because now that I've deleted them, Google is working fine, and Yahoo is showing me today's page!

You're my hero, MJEggertson!

 

[Skullfyre]

You may wish to run a search for a file called 'hosts' (no file extension). It exists in different places on different systems, always under some subfolder of your Windows system folder. That file allows you to bypass dns lookup for a domain name, so for example you can specify that google.com is always at 127.0.0.1, or whatever.

If you find a line similar to:

216.239.39.100 googole.com

you may wish to remove it. That line will always force your system to look for google at that address, instead of looking it up on the net dns registries. My guess is something like that is happening. You'll need to reboot or manually flush your server cache for any changes you made to take effect.

That information may also be in a file called 'lmhosts'.

That is what I was gonna suggest

I posted it on this site.
http://www.newertwist.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6

 

[GreenLantern]

Just wanted to say that I experienced some of the same problems described, and that the solution posts solved them. Thanks to everyone!

 

[Grazzt]

You may wish to run a search for a file called 'hosts' (no file extension). It exists in different places on different systems, always under some subfolder of your Windows system folder. That file allows you to bypass dns lookup for a domain name, so for example you can specify that google.com is always at 127.0.0.1, or whatever.

If you find a line similar to:

216.239.39.100 googole.com

you may wish to remove it. That line will always force your system to look for google at that address, instead of looking it up on the net dns registries. My guess is something like that is happening. You'll need to reboot or manually flush your server cache for any changes you made to take effect.

That information may also be in a file called 'lmhosts'.

MJEggertson's got it right. One of the PCs in our office here at work had the same issue. That's what I found was wrong. Once I removed the "crap" from the hosts file, all was good, and the workers were happy again.