search engine virus?

[GrimReality]

Anyone ever hear of/deal with a virus that blocks you from using your search engine? At first, it was just google, but now it's all of them. You go to search for something and it automatically sends you to some unrelated page.   My wife is going insane trying to fix it. We've ran AdAware, Malwarebytes, some Avgn thing she heard about, among others. Plus, we have Mcafee already installed that never caught it!
Any ideas folks?

[Tooker]

Don't know what browser you're using, but maybe check your proxy settings?  If something reset them, that could screw you up as you describe...

[Akanbe-]

My wife is going insane trying to fix it. We've ran AdAware, Malwarebytes, some Avgn thing she heard about, among others.

Hmm, I don't know what James Rolfe could do.

My vote would be to try Avast anti-virus (which would require uninstalled McAfee).  It has worked well for me in the past and, while not necessarily unique to Avast, it has a scanner that scans for shit before Windows loads which can be pretty useful as well.

[Annubis]

If nothing up to now works, Spybot Search and Destroy is worth a try.

EDIT: oh right, no Google... here http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html

[Tooker]

Thought you might be able to use some links, since you can't search for these things we're recommending. ;)

http://www.avast.com/en-us/index

http://www.safer-networking.org/index2.html

[Vanguard]

Did you notice a program called Anti-Virus Live on your computer, or some other software that just appeared out of nowhere? These rogue programs hijack your internet and redirect you to all sorts of places and are a pain to remove. This sounds symptomatic of one of those.

Either way, update all of your anti-virus/spyware software, reboot in safe mode, and then run them. If that doesn't work, you may need to download some sort of registry cleaner.

[GrimReality]

Thanks for all the input guys. My wife just said "fuck it" and called a repair service. Geeks on Site. They worked on it remotely and seemed to have fixed the problem. We'll see. I'll keep all this in mind in case something happens again.

[Parn]

For future reference, if you run into any problems again, make sure you run your anti-malware and anti-virus software in safe mode.  When you power up the computer, mash the F8 key until you get the boot menu and select safe mode.  This'll load up Windows with the bare essentials and without the malware that likes to run when you do a standard startup.  The reason why this is important is that some malware is designed to prevent your anti-virus or anti-malware software from working properly.  Safe mode will generally let you avoid this issue.

[GrimReality]

Thanks Parn. Yeah, I figured that out watching the guy fix it. If it happens again, I'm pretty confident I can deal with it on my own.

[Sagacious-T]

Google (lol) the program called rkill and run it right after your PC boots up. It will identify and shut down the processes stopping you.