A couple of days ago firefox started doing something really weird. Whenever I would search with google, no matter what I search for or what result I clicked on, I would get redirected to a random site. This wouldn't happen in internet explorer.

I tried running my full virus scan, which is supposed to take something like 90 minutes, but it will run for like 1000 minutes and still not be done (my work computer is slowwww), so I came here to see what other programs are recommended.

The stickied thread here first recommends getting malwarebytes. So I downloaded it and tried to run it, but no programs would run. So I thought shit, I better back up my work folder, but I couldn't even open my computer or windows explorer. So I figured I'd restart, and it has been trying to shut down for about an hour and a half. I usually just turn it off if when takes more than 15 minutes (I have only had to do this a few times), but I think that probably makes things worse on the next start up. So - should I let it try to shut itself down overnight, or just turn it off and see if I can get it to start up and then run malwarebytes?

This is more of a quick fix, but try going to \Windows\system32\drivers\etc\ and check your hosts file, look for anything redirecting to the website.

You should shut it down completely. If you have another computer available to you then you *could* plug the HDD from the infected computer in to the second (make sure nothing unsafe transfers) and then scan the HDD from there.

Well it redirects me to a different website everytime. It's like there is some sort of google/firefox virus that isn't particularly malicious, just annoying. But now the larger problem is that the system as a whole is really unstable. It's still trying to shut down, it's on "saving your settings."

Last time it started up it immediately gave me some error messages I don't understand that said something about being unable to write to memory.

So the immediate need is - do I wait for it to shut itself down? It's been trying for hours, so it looks like it's not gonna happen. Should I just turn it off?

Edit: Ok I decided to turn it off. I turned it back on, and I got to the Welcome to Windows log in screen. Before I can log in, an error comes up immediately: The instruction at "0x001a624b" referenced memory at "0x00000000". The memory could not be "written". Click OK to terminate the program. Click CANCEL to debug the program.

I hit OK and started to type my login and pass. Before I could finish it totally locked up. Going to have to just turn it off again. Is this related to the browser problem? or something else? What should I do?

If it tried for more than an hour to shutdown then hard shutting it down is fine.

Sounds like a HDD error caused by the bad shutdown. You should let it scan it's discs for corruption (it should try this automatically).


Most likely the browser problem caused some damage further down the line, and that caused the shutdown to hang and caused HDD errors.

Reinstall your PC, it's bit difficult to help without seeing the real condition

I'm not even gonna say how dumb that sounds.

This started happening to me in firefox, I just re-installed firefox and it worked just fine. I switched to google chrome recently but that re-installation worked just fine.

reinstalling your browser will probably only be a temp fix, i suggest doing that though as djpz suggests and also downloading or reinstalling another antivirus and scanning your main windows folders (not the whole hdd) for viruses.

i would also suggest using msconfig to check for any additional startup programs if you know how to use it.(otherwise it's hard to explain)

^
Haha, yeah switch to Chrome, that will fix it, plus then you get to use Chrome!


Nah but if he is using Firefox then obviously it is because he is unable to use Chrome for some reason, so I guess htat solution is not helpful.

Also restart your computer, if you cant get any virus softwares to work, check all the (proccess spelled wrong?) if you see anything that shouldnt be there, check up the name on the internet, virus etc etc nearly always autostart and is listed in the process (ctrl alt delete).
Also take a look in you autostart section, not the one in the start menue.

Thanks for the tips guys. I was able to back up my work folder before it really started to fail, at which point it would hang either before windows loaded or right after, so I couldn't run any virus scanners or anything - so last week I took it in and they reimaged the hard drive. Now everything's good. So glad I backed up my files....that would have been 2 years of work down the drain.