I'm asking this question for one of my co-workers.

She claims that all of a sudden recently her computer would not let her use the google search engine. It only lets her use Bing.com. When she types in http://www.google.com it says connection timed out, cannot access webpage.

She says she didn't download anything in particular, but who's to say. Any thoughts on what happened and is there something that can be done to fix this? Also, it's not an internal network thing, and our IT guy was clueless about what to do.

Any help would be appreciated.

7/22/2009 3:21:08 PM

go to http://74.125.45.100/

see if that works

report back

also go to start, run, type cmd, hit enter. type ping google.com

report back

if that gives errors

ping 74.125.45.100

report back

[Edited on July 22, 2009 at 3:24 PM. Reason : moar]

7/22/2009 3:22:48 PM

Quote :

"Any help would be appreciated."

The first thing I would do is hire a new IT guy.

7/22/2009 3:32:43 PM

yeah really. if he didnt already do what i said plus a traceroute and maybe a few other things then you need a new IT guy bad

and

Quote :

"it's not an internal network thing"

i don't think that's even a valid statement.

[Edited on July 22, 2009 at 3:35 PM. Reason : a]

7/22/2009 3:35:05 PM

^shows what I know.

>.<


Thanks, I'll try that.

7/22/2009 3:40:00 PM

7/22/2009 3:41:30 PM

okay, when I typed in that IP address it took me to Google's home page. However, the search function did not work.

When I went into the dos prompt this is what I got:

Pinging google.com [74.125.45.100] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 74.125.45.100: bytes=32 time=122ms TTL=55
Reply from 74.125.45.100: bytes=32 time=114ms TTL=55
Reply from 74.125.45.100: bytes=32 time=117ms TTL=55
Reply from 74.125.45.100: bytes=32 time=118ms TTL=55

Ping Statistics for 74.125.45.100:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 114ms, Maximum = 122ms, Average = 117ms

So now what?

7/22/2009 3:50:42 PM

firefox or internet explorer?

7/22/2009 3:52:18 PM

That was internet explorer, but we also tried accessing google with firefox.

7/22/2009 3:56:59 PM

yea, sounds like some type of spyware/malware/wtf-ever-it's-called-now-'ware. i'm not sure what the most popular thing for dealing with that is right now but try some of the programs on the first page of http://www.download.com and see if they help.

also you can boot into safe mode w/networking support and see if the problem goes away for shits and giggles if you're bored.

7/22/2009 4:08:59 PM

Thanks, I'll look into that.


She told me that within the last few months she downloaded Limewire (this to her work computer!). Not a really smart move, lol.

7/22/2009 4:14:06 PM

oh god damn

problem found, lol

i usually leave ppl open to do what they want on their computers at work until they do some shit like that..then theyre locked down. if they keep trying to fuck things up theyre locked down to the point that they can't even right click on shit, can't click on the start menu, can't use shortcut keys..and basically can only go to a few places on whatever server they need.. plus email, excel and word on their desktop. that usually fixes the problem. and keeps them off f'in myspace

[Edited on July 22, 2009 at 4:26 PM. Reason : asdf]

7/22/2009 4:14:30 PM

HOSTS file chicanery?

7/22/2009 4:55:30 PM

^ that was my initial thought, too.

7/22/2009 4:56:45 PM

hosts file, LSP stack and/or winsock being fucked

7/22/2009 6:02:35 PM

it was able to resolve google.com to an IP when pinging through.. is the hosts file not looked at then or something? i dont know that much about the process

[Edited on July 22, 2009 at 6:41 PM. Reason : a]

7/22/2009 6:40:09 PM

^ if it resolves to an ip, then its blocked somewhere, not redirected. google.com is blocked on port 80 im assuming...

will it let her use yahoo? Lets see how bad this this

If its blocked its not a DNS problem, its a firewall issue (im going general here, its still probably some malware id bet).

7/22/2009 7:05:50 PM

Start > Run > "c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc"
Double-Click Hosts and Open with Notepad

Should look kinda like this:


Now if I simply add the below line to your host file, whenever you go to http://www.google.com, you will be redirected to the IP address of my choosing. It's a nice little hack, but it requires a reboot, and it's as easy to fix as simply deleting the line, saving the file and rebooting. If that doesn't fix it, your problem is malware probably.

207.68.172.246 http://www.google.com

Not that I've ever done this. That's not funny at all.

[Edited on July 22, 2009 at 7:45 PM. Reason : -]

7/22/2009 7:40:14 PM

I will try to do that tomorrow when back at work. Thanks for the advice.

And just to clarify, when she tries to go to google it doesn't redirect to another site it just doesn't go anywhere.

7/22/2009 9:17:54 PM

yeah you can set it for google.com or whatever to direct to an address that doesn't exist which would make it do that. no telling if that's it or not

7/22/2009 9:26:52 PM

While it doesn't really help the issue, I'd be interested to see if sites like lmgtfy.com or http://godark.us/ would work.

7/22/2009 9:59:40 PM