Why does my laptop give weird, spammy search results?

January 26, 2005 8:59 AM

Last night I was Googling on my laptop when I started getting non-expected results. The same spammy sites kept getting returned, even when different search terms were used. Repeated virus scans turned up nothing. The same search on my work terminal returns what I expected so I know it's my laptop. ?

And for the record I am freaked out a little bit!

posted by shino-boy to Computers & Internet (13 answers total)

Download Ad-Aware and
Spybot-S&D, and also see if your 'HOSTS" file has any stray entries.
posted by mosch at 9:03 AM on January 26, 2005

Precisely what mosch said; I recommend the same two programs. It sounds more like adware than a virus.
posted by boomchicka at 9:16 AM on January 26, 2005

And if things continue, go to http://www.spywareinfo.com/. Very helpful and (if you need it, like me) patient. Great site.
posted by ObscureReferenceMan at 9:26 AM on January 26, 2005

Are you seeing the bad search results in other browsers? I know it's a little cliché to recommend Firefox in situations like this, but you can figure out if something has hijacked your browser by trying a different one (and if you're already using Firefox, try the search in IE).
posted by revgeorge at 10:15 AM on January 26, 2005

Microsoft AntiSpyware is free and excellent. (If you're comfortable with it, I'd recommend you also use HijackThis, look up any entries that you don't immediately recognize, and get rid of anything that smells of spyware. ) Finally download WinSockFix and click on 'Repair' -- it'll do the rest. Hope this helps!
posted by ori at 10:16 AM on January 26, 2005

I'd try CWShredder. It fixed that exact same problem for me once upon a time.
posted by whatisish at 10:21 AM on January 26, 2005

direct link for CWShredder download.
posted by whatisish at 10:28 AM on January 26, 2005

Response by poster: revgeorge:
I got the same (bad) results from IE and Firefox.

Thank you everyone, I can't wait to go home tonight and try your suggestions.
posted by shino-boy at 11:49 AM on January 26, 2005

definitely be prepared to spend an hour or more fixing this. you may have to use compinations of the tools listed above as well as some manual tinkering. and lots of restarts
posted by alkupe at 12:27 PM on January 26, 2005

I've used the lot, constantly, and I have to say that the new Microsoft tool is beautiful. It dealt effortlessly with quite sophisticated threats and told me sensibly what it was doing. I'm very impressed.
posted by grahamwell at 1:36 PM on January 26, 2005

Of course, we all failed to mention that this has been asked and answered previously.

btw, I'm rather fond of the new MS tool as well.
posted by whatisish at 1:59 PM on January 26, 2005

Hmmm, I hadn't heard of this new MS spyware tool, and I have been having trouble getting rid of the last vestiges of some adware sitting on my computer. Maybe this new tool will help. Ad-aware can get rid of it for a session, but can't destroy it permanently it would seem. I have been preparing for the inevitable (and ever more frequent) reformat operation, which I hate and dread.

Is there a way to truly get rid of Internet Explorer (in Win2000 Pro)? Because it merely pops up ads in IE and I think if the browser was gone it would not have any visible effects.
posted by rooftop secrets at 3:44 PM on January 26, 2005

Response by poster: Follow-up:
My hosts file was clean. Microsoft Spyware scan found some stuff and cleaned it, that did not solve my Google problem. CWShredder found no Cool Web spyware so did nothing.

My solution was to use system restore to go back a few restore points until the spyware was gone. That worked.
posted by shino-boy at 10:26 PM on January 26, 2005