Very weird... cannot load google.com or ping it, cannot do searches on yahoo.com!

[dude]

I have a very weird problem. A cousin of mines has a laptop that was working fine but all of a sudden this morning, his IE will not load google.com. He can get to yahoo.com but cannot do searches. He can click on links fine.

A ping of yahoo works fine. A ping to google.com times out! This means no matter what browser I use, it won't work either way.

I told him to look at his host file and it seems fine, no entries at all.

What could be the problem?

 

[morkinva]

How about a tracert google.com ?

 

[tjaisv]

Sounds like his browser might be infected with spyware/malware. I'd suggest having him run Ad-aware or Spybot to see if he has anything in his system that's trying to redirect his browser or something.

It could also be temporary DNS issues with his ISP. Use a different DNS server, Speakeasy.net has a bunch of them.

 

[Savarak]

check the /windows/help folder for a hosts file... if there is a host file there, then its infected!

 

[Hossenfeffer]

Do an anti-virus check, then a spyware check. That'll fix it