Help with a Redirect Virus

[bajabum]

Not to hijack the thread, but I had a 'Ransomware' virus last year, I tried all of the recomendations listed here, and ended up reformatting the hard drive.
Sometimes the virus wins...
Restore hasn't worked for me.
When you get your confuser working, do a backup regularly.

 

[skspurling]

Okay, you have a 2 step issue. 1st, you downloaded something that modified your hosts.txt file. Search for it and go ahead and delete it. It is a way to hard code dns names into your os, and isn't needed unless you are in an office environment that needs to set something up that way. Next download malware bytes and do a scan. The free virus checkers do a good enough job, but just good enough. MSE is next to useless. Anything else is better. 2nd, use malware bytes to remove anything else that may be trying to redirect you. If things persist, try the kerpersky system boot cd, and scan your system.

 

[California]

Checking the hosts file was the first thing I did. There's nothing in it but oem comments. Its file date/time is same as the other system files. I also changed the DNS server in the pc and the router temporarily; no improvement.

Then I downloaded malwarebytes and did a scan, in Safe Mode.
The result is shown in post #1 above. (something that may be relevant was found and quarantined but this had no effect on the problem). Running malwarebytes a second time came up clean.

I'll try a Kaspersky boot cd, I hadn't thought of that. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

[California]

gave up and 4 years ago bought a Mac. In 4 years, have never had a wit of a problem with this sort of crap.

Heck I've run ten years since a problem, and that was an inside deal. My tenant in the ranch's granny cabin ordered DSL and shared it with me. Since we were on the same LAN, something she brought home from work got past my firewall. But the first virus scan I ran cleaned it out.

Prior to that, I don't remember anything more significant than that clear back to the DOS era. (When hardware configuration was the thing most likely to be a headache.)

I admire the way Mac is a closed and nearly perfect world. But I'm not interested in stepping into that bubble. Right now a close friend has some Mac external drives from past eras that his modern Mac can't read. He bought an inexpensive 2004-era Mac and says he found it is compatible with some but not all of his old drives.

My own experience with Macs was many years ago but I still have an attitude from it. The salesman told my boss that her new Mac was compatible with the Novell network I had installed in our office. It wasn't, the connectivity was vaporware at that point but somehow this was my fault. Months later Apple released the software but - intentionally by design - it allowed the Mac's to run on the LAN only talking to other Macs, in a separate partition with no document interchange possible to the secretaries on their pc's. Somehow this was my fault too. Novell documented this clearly but the boss didn't care what Novell said, she trusted only the promises of her Mac salesman. I have lots more Mac stories like this that I won't bore you with. Well just one. Recently I learned that the family photos (jpg's) I've included in emails for years to one family member can't be opened on her Mac. She never let on that she couldn't view them. Then recently she insisted that I DO SOMETHING so she could see some photos that she wanted. After much research and hair pulling I put the photos in a pdf. She was delighted. As is probably obvious, I've stood outside that Mac bubble for a long time now and don't have much interest in learning how it works.

 

[arrow]

Heck I've run ten years since a problem, and that was an inside deal. My tenant in the ranch's granny cabin ordered DSL and shared it with me. Since we were on the same LAN, something she brought home from work got past my firewall. But the first virus scan I ran cleaned it out.

Prior to that, I don't remember anything more significant than that clear back to the DOS era. (When hardware configuration was the thing most likely to be a headache.)

I admire the way Mac is a closed and nearly perfect world. But I'm not interested in stepping into that bubble. Right now a close friend has some Mac external drives from past eras that his modern Mac can't read. He bought an inexpensive 2004-era Mac and says he found it is compatible with some but not all of his old drives.

My own experience with Macs was many years ago but I still have an attitude from it. The salesman told my boss that her new Mac was compatible with the Novell network I had installed in our office. It wasn't, the connectivity was vaporware at that point but somehow this was my fault. Months later Apple released the software but - intentionally by design - it allowed the Mac's to run on the LAN only talking to other Macs, in a separate partition with no document interchange possible to the secretaries on their pc's. Somehow this was my fault too. Novell documented this clearly but the boss didn't care what Novell said, she trusted only the promises of her Mac salesman. I have lots more Mac stories like this that I won't bore you with. Well just one. Recently I learned that the family photos (jpg's) I've included in emails for years to one family member can't be opened on her Mac. She never let on that she couldn't view them. Then recently she insisted that I DO SOMETHING so she could see some photos that she wanted. After much research and hair pulling I put the photos in a pdf. She was delighted. As is probably obvious, I've stood outside that Mac bubble for a long time now and don't have much interest in learning how it works.

Part of my advantage here Cali (if you can call ignorance is bliss) is that my computer usage acumen is one step above picking my nose.

 

[skspurling]

After all you've tried, I suspect a bad plug-in in Firefox. Try the same thing in Explorer, and then Chrome. If they don't act the same, check proxy settings, and plug-ins in the browser. There may have been something you had to install as part of a web site that has caused your sessions to start getting hijacked for an adware site. Virus and system checkers don't catch those in most cases.
Also, try CCleaner to clean out any registry or cookie stuff.

 

[IslandTractor]

Also, try CCleaner to clean out any registry or cookie stuff.

My personal experience with registry "cleaners" is that they cause as many problems as they solve. I don't have any experience with CCleaner though.

 

[KubotainNH]

I'm not huge on the registry cleaners either. Sometimes there's nothing like a new O/S build though. The thing that gets me on this one is the issue shows in both browsers.

 

[skspurling]

I'm not huge on the registry cleaners either. Sometimes there's nothing like a new O/S build though. The thing that gets me on this one is the issue shows in both browsers.

I've had my share of bad experiances with registry cleaners. CCleaner works better and hasn't broken anything yet. Best part is that it cleans up other stuff too, like left over update packages and cache files.

 

[California]

Ok, I solved the mystery. I described the solution in a new thread:

Redirect 'Virus' resolved ... its a TBN feature!