Sorry, I guess this is OT, but I have seen other computer questions addressed in here.
I have the darndest problem I ever heard of. Using Win-7 Home Edition Premium. Using IE (Internet Explorer) or Foxfire, I can not get to Google, Bing, or Yahoo. Furthermore, I can not get to any site that references any of those search engine sites.
Using a friend's computer, I have searched every place I can find. I see where others have had this problem, and some have fixed it. I tried all their solutions to no avail. I have gone to MS sites without any luck. I have been to all the computer related NGs, again, without any luck.
So, my question is: Does anyone know of any good interactive sites to try to get a weird problem solved?
Turn off whatever W7 has for a 'safe surfing' or 'net nanny' protection. Sounds like it thinks these sites are evil and is blocking them. Had a similar problem with the browsing protection in AVG and in PCTools (on different computers). If the site came up at all, it took several minutes. After about the 3rd blocked but known-safe site, I disabled the utilities, and all was back to normal. I saw later that they now ask if you want to install them when you are installing the virus/malware protection. I can only figure, that unless you have an ultra-fast connection, which the idiot programmers assume everyone has, it takes to long to bump the big database in the sky when you type in a URL, and the program times out.
You might get lucky, but you'll waste a lot of time. I had the same problem a couple times, and each time it was a virus. One time I fixed it for kicks, but I used to be in the business of fixing such things. It can be a PITA, and you'll still feel your PC is "dirty." The second time I just restored from an image. If you don't find an answer pretty quick, I suggest you reinstall or load an image. Use an anti-virus program in the future. I use free AVG but there are others. If you want real recovery protection and don't like reinstalling your system, learn to image copy your system. I use Ghost but there are others. Think I had AVG installed when the problem happened the second time, but since I have an image I can live dangerously. Good luck.
Not sure if this is any help, but I've been researching a script called about:blank.
It's also known as Homepage Hijacker. I run NoScript, which kills all client-side scripts, then lists the scripts it has killed. I'm seeing this about:blank far too often, even on
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If you can get any search page working, search for about:blank and do some reading. I've been leaning toward the duckduckgo search page, lately.
Yeah, my neighbor's computer got a virus and did the same thing, Malwarbytes got it out. You will have to download it from another computer to a flash drive and install it on your computer because as you noticed the virus blocks access to most help sites. The free one ought to work good enough,
Almost guaranteed you have a virus. Most likely one that masquerades as an anti-virus program and shuts off access to anything other than itself that might possibly be able to get rid of it.
All I can say is good luck, and get someone who knows what they are doing to fix it for you. It is NOT simple.
Thanks for the good info, Vic. I have AVG installed as well, and it is up to date, and run daily. I also run Ccleaner, Malwarebyte, and Superantispyware, daily. I agree that I think I have a virus from somewhere. I REALLY don't know how to restore individual files, nor would I know what files to restore. I am pretty much at a stand still and frustrated. Thanks for the info though.
And if he does get it fixed, which I agree is dicey, drop IE like a hot potato and use Firefox, NoScript and AdBlock. Javacrap makes for great interactivity - for the bad guys as well as the good. The default position should be "everyone's a bad guy until proven otherwise." Turn all Java-anything off unless it's a site you need to access and one you trust.
Look for an anti-malware program that will remove a "browser hijacker" which is what I think got on your machine. I have to clean stuff like that off friend's and customer's computers all the time. Good luck!
My experience is it is NOT java, and it is NOT IE that causes the problem. Shut off the microsoft windows messaging system as that is what is being used to get the crap in past the antivirus programs.
When you find out, please tell me how you got it to do this. I would like to block Bing. Dumbasses. They start with some interesting headline, and it takes six or seven clicks after looking through piles of ads and other pages to find what you want. And that frickin popup search engine. I'm happy with Google, thank you very much, and am not interested in anything Bing.
Sometimes when I have trouble, I do a system restore, under windows accessories, and take system back to date it functioned properly. It will not destroy any files you saved or altered.
Yeah, but. One of the joys of using the internet is exploring, browsing, following links to unfamiliar sites that may become some of your favorites. What you are suggesting is analogous to never to travelling out of town, and if you have to, only eating in the same chain restaurants that you have tried in your own home town. Not a fun way to live.
I use Firefox for browsing and have the add-on LinkExtend installed. It consolidates the reviews of 7 web site safety utilities (including Norton, WebOfTrust, Google Safe Browsing, Site Advisor, and others) into one toolbar icon that changes color depending upon the ratings. A drop down menu from the icon lets you easily navigate to each ratings site's listing for that specific page.
When I land on an unfamiliar page, and the icon is any color but green, I'll immediately check the ratings before clicking on any link on the unfamiliar page. Sometimes, the ratings are what I consider to be appropriate warnings and sometimes they appear to be false alarms. So far, since using this add-on, I've avoided (I believe) all problems with malicious sites. I also have free AnviVir antivirus, COMODO's free firewall, Malwarebytes, SpywareBlaster, and SuperAntiSpyware installed, up to date, and use the scanners in most of those utilities regularly to help keep my system clean.
Not at all. I am suggesting you start with not trusting any site and exploring and trusting as in incrementally and related process. All it takes is one incident. There's a side benefit. When all the NY Times readers were complaining bitterly about all the full page Flash ads, the ads the jiggle, the ads that scream, the full page cleft-palate ads, etc. I realized I hadn't had ANY of them inflicted on me.
I will be the first to admit that it gets inconvenient at times but IMHO, there's nothing more inconvenient than having to reload or rebuild a machine because someone did a drive-by download. It always happens at the worst time. I just hope the OP doesn't need the PC to do his taxes.
I don't care about YouTube and I am more than happy to have a lot of tracking techniques like the new allegedly "impossible to erase" Flash cookies completely disabled because I use neither Flash nor very much JavaCrap. I've cleaned up a lot of machines for friends who got infesterated with worms, keystroke recorders, etc. No fun, lots of anxiety and never a feeling that you got it all. Getting seriously hosed is much akin to the old saw "A Republican is merely a Liberal who's been mugged." It changes a user's attitude toward their PC.
That's one way to do it, depending on where your comfort level lies.
And slow it down. I use older machines that draw a lot less current (read $) than modern machines and the sloppiness of modern coding is quite apparent. My PCs are used for information surfing, newsreading, reading the news, email, word processing and MP3 playing, mostly. With AdBlock and NoScript my world is obviously quite different from yours. My nephew and my techie friends howl when I tell them I still use dialup. (-: When you strip away all the BS Flash ads and block all the tracking sites, things speed up tremendously.
Every anti-something you add on increases the chance that you'll get unwanted interactions. Whenever I encounter Norton, the first thing I do is strip it because it's always locking something up. Was great in 1990 but not so much now.
Most websites other than Google are hideous violations of the rules of human factors engineering and good design. Many assume a fixed resolution and cannot reflow well into other screen sizes, something that the original HTML specs were quite concerned with. Human-computer interaction studies have shown time and time again that there's a really rather small limit to how many choices a user can hold in his head at one time. It's assumed to be less than ten. Name a website that has as few as 10 choices. Google, once upon a time but not anymore. When you add in drop downs, mouseovers and highlighted links, many home pages have 100 choices or more on their home pages. And stupid Flash ads that you have to wait through to get to the content you seek. This way chaos lies.
So Peter, I think it's obvious we have very different needs/uses. That's not a bad thing, just the way things are. The OP has to decide what kind of surfer he wants to be and how to protect himself accordingly.
When I restore/rebuild an infesterated machine, I alway load Firefox with NoScript and AdBlock and people are happy to be able to surf again and decide, proactively (and easily) which sites they need JavaCrap activated on. Having their "Shields Up" becomes understandably comforting because it's a seriously *badly* feeling when you know someone's taking control of your computer from some site half a world away.
NoScript protects you from a lot of bad things. What I like is that it shows me how many places a website is reaching out to as it draws the page, like Discover.com bank making an excursion to
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which made me a little nervous. WTF? Allowing universal use of JavaCrap is just asking to get splattered again. While a lot of trash comes in through Windows messaging, the really harmful stuff is almost always courtesy of JavaCrap.
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