(no subject)

[turps]

I have Google back!

I'm thrilled beyond coherent speech just now. I know it's just a search engine...but Google!

It turns out I'd been infected by a trojan virus from a rogue website. Last night someone posted to Senad about the same problem I had, being redirected away from any search engine. There was a reply about it being the qhost virus and how to remove it. I spent last night downloading removal tools, then manually deleting the infected host files. I was *not* in a good mood then. Virus creators are *scum*!

But at least my home page is back.

Comments

[daughtershade.livejournal.com]

I have the same problem. Is there any way I can find out how to get rid of it? Where can I get the removal tools? It's been driving me nuts. Not a single search engine will work for me.

[turps33.livejournal.com]

I know exactly how you feel. I was search engineless for over a week. I still wouldn't have known it was a virus if it wasn't for a post on a mailing list.

These are the links that I used. To be honest I don't know which ones worked as I did them all.

This tells you about qhost http://its.med.yale.edu/security/alerts/qhost.html

This is one removal tool http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/trojan.qhosts.html

and I also used one from here

http://www.simplysup.com/tremover/download.html

Probably overkill but I was ready to try anything.

I also did this. I was scared I was deleting something important but once I found the file and deleted it I could access all search engines.

See if you have a file C:\WINDOWS\Help\hosts. If so, delete it.

From what I gather the virus changes the ISP address of search engines and stores the wrong ones in this folder.

The patch from microsoft about qhost is here http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/security/bulletin/MS03-040.asp

I hope this helps. If it doesn't just send a comment and I'll track down some more links I used.

Good luck!

[daughtershade.livejournal.com]

Oh my god! It worked! Thank you so much! Yay! *jumps up and down* *hugs*

[turps33.livejournal.com]

You're more than welcome!

I'm so glad it worked for you!