Help! My computer is acting crazy!
 

I'm usually pretty good with computers and take care of mine. However, I'm pretty sure I picked up a virus/trojan/SOMETHING?! that's messing with my computer, more specifically anything having to do with Google.

Yesterday I was trying to download a video that my boss had posted on YouTube like a year ago, so that I could post it on our Facebook. (I know that I could have just posted the link, but I wanted to have the video actually uploaded onto our Facebook Fan page). I had to get it off of YouTube because it was a year ago and she could not find the actual file of the video on her computer. I didn't know if this was possible but after a little searching, I found that there are some websites that allow you to download a video from YouTube to your harddrive. The site I used was on KeepVid.com. Admittedly, it looked a little sketchy...but I needed to do this, plus I had virus protection (or so I thought!) and I knew I would be in and out in a second. I downloaded it, and my anti-virus asked me if I wanted to allow access to something? I said no. The video downloaded and it worked fine, and my computer was working fine. Then last night, I go to my computer to video chat with my bf (using Gmail). I was logged into my work gmail account, so I went to switch to my personal so we could chat. When I logged out I got an error (I cant remember what it said) but now I can't get into gmail or many Google features.

When I go to gmail.com on Firefox I get this error:
Not Found

The requested URL /accounts/ServiceLogin was not found on this server.

Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at www.google.com Port 443

When I try it on IE, I get this error saying "There is a problem with this website's security certificate".

Some other things I've noticed:
When I use Google to search, the search results turn up fine, but sometime when I click on the link, it does not take me to the correct link. It forwards me to another sketchy looking search engine, and won't let me click backwards out of it.

Also, certain Google features won't work. For instance: www.google.com/support just keeps me at google.com.

When I go to google.com, it shows that I am NOT logged into anything. But, if I click on "images" or "video", I notice that I'm suddenly logged into my work account again. (Because my name shows up in the top right). However, when I click "my account" or "mail" from there, I get the same error as when I tried to go straight to gmail.com.

I've run "Full Scans" on McAfee, Ad-Aware, and Malwarebytes. McAfee didn't find any problems, but Ad-Aware and Malwarebytes both found stuff and got rid of them. However, I'm still having the problem. I'm out of ideas. Does anyone out there know what's going on with this???

Thanks for reading my novel and I really appreciate any advice you guys give!

It's 99.9% a spyware/trojan/virus problem (there's very little delineation between them anymore).

Try to update Malwarebytes and/or Spybot - there's a good chance you have Vundo or something similar that is actually blocking their ability to run a full update (it blocks the site), and most likely the update will fail (or will find nothing). I just updated seconds ago; it looks like the latest db version is 2330 (date: 6/24/09).

Your best bet is to download HijackThis! and ask for help on the more advanced support forums - programs such as VundoFix or ComboFix can cause serious system damage if used improperly, and it sounds like your infection may require those sorts of tools (and I am too stupid to help with that situation).

Also, downloading video from YouTube is not a good idea anymore. If you continue having issues of redirects with your browser, uninstall it, run another spyware scan on your PC and reinstall.

Lastly, I recommend Safari or Google Chrome as an alternate browser to use if you still have troubles with Firefox.

Are people embedding them with viruses now, too??

So sad.

I went on a date with a guy about a year ago who started telling me about writing viruses as a hobby. He said when he gets mad at someone he doesn't tell them, he'll just send them a virus and hack into their computer server. And, when he talked about it, his face lit up. Yeah, that was out last date.

This is a good idea in general, but it will likely (like, >80% chance) have no effect on this specific problem.

What is likely happening is that the virus is loading on startup, and will infect any browser you install at that point (indeed, once there, Vundo will effectively disable any browser if not in safe mode).

It's best to ask a pro, unless you're very comfortable with things such as running diagnostic tools in safe mode or installing the Windows startup bypass utilities.

They're not being "embedded" in the sense that you're generally under little or no risk to play a video on YouTube - however, .flv files (which are what YouTube uses) and other, similar Flash- or Java-enabled file types are easy targets for viruses (and can easily be passed along via email chains, "viral video", etc.).

That is true and she may be able to get updates needed to get rid of the virus....I am just basing this on something I tried for a client which worked.

Worst comes to worse, she should back up all of her documents and if this is something infecting her boot sector, be prepared to have her system reformatted if all else fails.

Yeah it happens...any flash video is a possible virus carrier...so if you don't have to, don't download it.

As far as your date....well...


Sidebar: Just as I thought it would...macs are starting to become prone to viruses...so don't think just cuz you have one, you are immune!

It was reported back in January that now may be a time to start beefing up security on your mac and part of the reason why some people are getting them??? Suprise surprise...downloading pirated software.

Thanks for the advice everyone! I'm happy to say that my computer is fixed!

I got in touch with a friend of mine who is good with computers. He recommened Ad Aware and Spybot too. I hadn't tried Spybot yet so I downloaded it and ran it. While we waited for Spybot to finish scanning, he tapped into my computer or whatever and did that thing where he takes over the screen to test some things out, just to make sure he was dealing with a spyware issue--which is was. The Spybot scan ended and found 28 issues (even after I had run McAfee, Ad Aware and Malwarebytes on full scans!) Unfortunately that was not it. :(

I then had to go to a meeting and had to leave the problem for later. When I had some time again later, I searched something like "being fowarded to another search engine" (that wasn't it exactly, but it was something like that). After a few clicks through internet forums, I found this http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
I downloaded the file on there, and installed it, and it worked!!!

Although now that I look at the name of the page again, maybe I'm just blocked the problem and it's still lurking somewhere on my computer. Ugh, whatever, I ran like 4 different scans today and Google is working correctly, that's all I care about.

Again, thanks for all the suggestions!

solved - :)
 

Im not sure of how this happened someone else can help me with this,
but i got the solution,
there is a file named "host" in "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc"
directory, which is corrupted and because of that google throws the above mentioned error.
you can remove all the DNS servers mentioned within the host file, and clear browsers cache (use CCLEANER). refresh! ur done!:)