One of our readers asked, where exactly the problem lies if you type a search in google and it gets redirected to some other website than the one it was intended for!
Also when I do a search from google sometimes the search goes to a different site than the one I have chosen, ending up with a off the wall search. It appears that the search has been redirected.
Thank you for any help.
Confused
Well, it means that there is some malware on your computer which needs to be cleaned. To remove it you can download Super Anti Spyware from
Here and Malwarebytes from
Here. This combination is very effective and would remove all malwares from your system.
But
before you can download the anti malware software, install it and run it on your computer, you need to do this:
Click on "Start" menu, followed by clicking on "Control Panel"
In the "Control Panel", click on "Performance and Maintenance"
Within the "Performance and Maintenance" window, click on "Administrative Tools"
In the "Administrative Tools" window, click on "Computer Management"
Within the "Computer Management" window, select "Device Manager" and in the "View" menu, on top, click on "Show hidden devices".
On the right side of the window, scroll down to "Non-Plug and Play Drivers". In there, search for "TDSSserv.sys", right click it, and select and click on "disable"
Followed which, restart your computer, download the anti malware software, as mentioned above, run them and the problem that you are facing with your search engine will no longer be there.
In the "Control Panel", click on "Performance and Maintenance"
Within the "Performance and Maintenance" window, click on "Administrative Tools"
In the "Administrative Tools" window, click on "Computer Management"
Within the "Computer Management" window, select "Device Manager" and in the "View" menu, on top, click on "Show hidden devices".
On the right side of the window, scroll down to "Non-Plug and Play Drivers". In there, search for "TDSSserv.sys", right click it, and select and click on "disable"
Followed which, restart your computer, download the anti malware software, as mentioned above, run them and the problem that you are facing with your search engine will no longer be there.
September 1, 2009 at 5:36 AM
i have this exact problem in firefox i type something in the google search bar, click on link and goes to another site, close that site and do it a couple more times and it works???? funny thing is i have both softwares you mentioned above and been using for a month but still have this problem. and i don't have TDSSserv.sys in the Non-Plug and Play Drivers section. please help get out of this hole thats getting deeper. Thx
September 2, 2009 at 5:18 PM
This is for certain that your system is infected and so the search result in various search engine gets redirected and takes you anywhere but to the original search result page.
The above method should have worked fine, but since you have mentioned that you don't have TDSSserv.sys in the Non-Plug and Play Drivers, so try doing this:
(Right Click) "My Computer" - Click on "Properties" - Click on "System Restore" Tab - Check the box which says "Turn off System Restore on all drives" - Click on "Apply" and "OK" [This is to stop a reinfection]
Next, Clean Temp files, for this Click on "Start" menu on your taskbar, goto and click on "Run". In the "Run" window type: %temp% and delete all the files and folders there. To make things easy, you can download CCleaner from here (www.ccleaner.com) incase you don't have it installed yet. All you need to do is run the program to clean all the junk on the PC. [Before running, make sure all the boxes are ticked under the Windows and Applications tabs, including "Advanced" tabs(except for the Old prefetch Data option, this should be unticked) and your browsers should be closed.
Download, install, update and run these two:
(Both are free and very reliable)
Spybot Search & Destroy (if you don't have it, you can get it from here: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybotsd/index.html
Do a full system scan.
Also get, Avira Anti-Virus - http://www.free-av.com/
Again a full system scan.
After cleaning the infecion, reboot the PC and turn the System Restore on.
Hoping this helps, but incase it doesn't and you feel you are stuck up with the same problem, please don't hesitate to write again. We'll work it out :) No worries!
Just to check, do you update the program definitions regularly for both Superantispyware and Malwarebytes?
September 6, 2009 at 11:25 PM
Thx for the help but nope. spybot found stuff but wasn't anything to do with the google search and disk defrag still doesn't work. i'll also ran malewrebytes and SUPERAntiSpyware. super found stuff found stuff after i ran spybot and it was odd because the files it found was trojans in the registry that had the word spybot in the description. so i took care of it not sure if i should have or not. oh ya i already had Avira but it didn't detect anything.
also checked for TDSSserv.sys and still not there. got any other tricks?
September 7, 2009 at 2:00 PM
No problems! Let's try this out. Here the virus which is redirecting your google searches is "go.google.com redirects". Because of this the browser gets redirected to fake sites containing adsense ads.
Since your PC is not able to detect TDSSserv.sys, you probably have a mutation of the original virus. The only alternative [and a good one :)] is download Trojan Remover [http://www.simplysup.com/] Once you download it, restart your PC in a Safe mode + Networking, install and Run it. Once it finds the problems, it will give you an option of resetting your drivers. Do that and then Trojan Remover will automatically tell you it needs to restart your computer. Once it reboots, shut it down and reboot your computer, allowing Windows to start normally. Hopefully, all will be fine after that.
Our suggestion is to uninstall Trojan Remover as soon as it cleans your PC ~ don’t wait for the trial period to expire. (We left Trojan Remover on one of our PC's, and that machine mysteriously had the google redirect virus again shortly after the free trial expired. Can’t say they invented it, but the company definitely wants your money! It sure has a quick and very effective fix, but to be safe, get rid of it once it cleans your machine. It’s quite easily uninstalled and not worth the risk of it causing problems down the line.)
And yes, don't worry about the disk defragmenter, it will automatically work, once this virus is eliminated!
September 9, 2009 at 7:04 AM
WOW Thanks so much!! those steps did it. The trojan remover didn't mention anything about resetting the drivers but i guess it did what it had to do to remove the virus. the funny thing is this all stemmed off from the problem when i installed firefox 3.5 awhile ago, and i still have that problem. i go to any site, even yours and it says "problem loading page", "Server not found", "Firefox can't find the server at dummy-essentials.blogspot.com". but i refresh a couple and it will work. got anything for this?
and i am a dummy when it comes to the guts of a PC, but you smoothed it out for me. Thx again for your help.
September 9, 2009 at 9:20 AM
Glad to know its working now and thanks for updating :)
Reg. Firefox not able to locate the server in one go, we will certainly write a new post shortly, as soon as we digg out the right solution for it. Do keep a check on the posts coming up.
September 9, 2009 at 7:25 PM
trojan remover did the job! this was driving me mad!
defrag working again :)
thanks very much for the advice.
September 10, 2009 at 10:23 AM
@ ray
You are welcome :)
November 3, 2009 at 7:23 AM
I have a similar problem with my google searches being redirected and sometimes a new firefox browser window opens with 3 tabs, two of which are ads. The only difference is I can run disk defragmenter with no problem. I've tried all the above. Each program does not find anything, but my problem still persists. Please help.
November 3, 2009 at 10:34 AM
The problem that you are facing with Google searches getting redirected and firefox opening with multiple ad sites, indicates just one thing, that your computer is virus infected. Which antivirus are you using? Any firewall installed on your PC?
November 4, 2009 at 1:14 AM
I am currently using Avira Anti-Virus and the windows firewall.
November 5, 2009 at 7:54 PM
If its a free version of Avira, then chances are that it won't be able to detect the virus that has affected your PC. Trojan remover should have caught it, because so far whichever computers were facing this problem, TR cleaned it and there was no further re-direction. We would suggest go in for a complete version of any good AV, we are using Mc Afee (Enterprise ver) and so far never faced any problem. Try out any AV, but it shouldn't be a free version, they end up skipping a lot of viruses that your PC is infected with.