Google problems?

[splintax]

Just trying to run a search on Google on a client's PC and Google won't load up at all.

Just displays the text "soon..".. creepy. Checked the source and that's all there is, nothing I'm missing. Anyone want to Google up an answer for me?

edit: just tried to access my Gmail and FF gave a whole bunch of errors about an insecure certificate that belonged to "pleska". Very suspect. What is wrong with this PC?!

edit2: also happening in IE as well as FF.. tempted to log out of my µT forums account :| but at least I use different passwords for all sites.

edit3: ah, this PC has out-of-date AV, and the user isn't 100% computer-literate I will scan with avast now..

edit4: avast didn't turn up anything, but I checked out the hosts file, and found a whole bunch of mappings to search engines including yahoo, google etc. It turned out to be a relic from an old trojan that was on here a while ago. Don't know how this turned up now though.. :|

[1c3d0g]

Well, my standard advice to anyone who has had the unfortunate opportunity to have been infected with a trojan is:

1.) Back up all your data

2.) Format C:\

3.) Install fresh new OS.

I simply do not trust a PC that has been infected with a trojan, and neither should you (or your client, in this case). :/

[splintax]

yep, exactly, but backing up data takes time, and they usually can't be bothered paying me to do that

Also, you back up all of it (including the trojan) or you miss stuff out - and then your client gets angry..

[chaosblade]

HOSTS files are ancient.. Hopefully be removed in future OS (it was invented for NT LAN usage anyway, no real use of it online besides trojans doing bad things )

[splintax]

It's kinda useful for me, or was. If you type in a keyword (eg. "µTorrent") into Firefox's address bar, it Google searches it and uses I'm Feeling Lucky to automatically go to the top result for that query. You can create bookmarks in Opera to redirect to a given page (eg. "utforums" might redirect to forums.ut...). But there is no such feature in IE..

You can create a hosts entry for a domain, to slightly replicate the Opera functionality.. but hey, I would be happy to see it gone as long as IE had such a feature in it.