Nothing to do with anything cool or fun like this forum should be but I'm lazy and figured this'd be the best way to get some advice from everyone. My compy went nuts - I need help. A few days ago I got a pop up message that looked like it was a fake "download our virus protection" website - clearly a virus yeah? Didn't click on it, ran the antivirus they give us at UT (forefront) - says I'm good on virus, malware, spyware, etc. But since then I can't use google or any of its services (i.e. gmail, docs, etc.). If I try to sign in it gives me a security certificate error, I continue anyways - 404 not found error. If I search with google I get a list of links, I click on one, and I get redirected to some random website with links to cheap airfare, #$%@^ pumps, you name it. I can search with other search engines but on Mozilla and IE I can't use any google features. Took it to IT here - reset all my internet option stuff, certificates, homepages, etc. Haven't uninstalled/reinstalled IE or Mozilla so I could do that? Don't have chrome - would that do anything? Did a system restore but I could only restore back to a few days ago (so again I'm thinking virus) and that didn't fix it. Basically they told me to reformat. If I do I'd lose some programs I don't think I can get back (unless one of you helps me "borrow" them from the internet or has key gens, etc. - i.e. my copy of Photoshop CS3 ext. - which I don't want to be without! But also statistics software and other stuff I need for my research and classes). Hopefully I can get most stuff back if I reformat but anything I can do before this? Thanks mo fos!

I know I'm not one of the resident computer experts here but this sounds exactly like a problem I had with my computer. I got a pop-up that said I was at risk and needed to download their virus protection, when I scanned with my own anti-virus stuff it couldn't find anything, and I couldn't use the internet because it kept redirecting me to their fake virus protection website.

Here's what I did. I used my roommates computer to google the name of the fake virus protection. This gave me several websites written by computer experts with step by step directions to fix the problem along with links to free downloads of programs to get rid of the virus. I downloaded the programs on my roommates computer and then transferred them to mine. It worked perfectly. So in conclusion I would just use google to figure it out.

Yea that's a good plan. And next time don't click banners or popups and don't download virus.exe

Thomas thinks just because he teaches computer stuff at a university he knows what he's talking about.

ALWAYS download virus.exe when it prompts you. It's like getting a free program!

You have a program running on your computer called a redirector. These programs usually infect Google and re-direct their search results. unfortunately doing this breaks any Google Apps that you may have been using.

Go here:
www.malwarebytes.org

Download the free version, install it, and scan your computer. This software usually detects and removes most redirectors.

Good luck, let us know how it goes!

Thanks again guys. So I've run malwarebytes like a million times in safe mode (even after deleting some programs from my registry or whatever it's called) - it and my virus protection removed as much as they could find. Now I'm not getting fake virus pop ups and I can access the internet but I still can't access google and get redirected when I try.

I just got a Tb back up drive and a Windows 7 upgrade is $33 at the student computer store so I'm just gonna back up all my crap and have them do a clean install.

Unless anyone can think of anything else I can try??