Search Engines not Working

[Betsy]

Many (most) of the popular search engines do not work for
me. I have tried searching for a Qhosts virus (to no
avail), fixing my HOSTS file, resetting the IE options,
and deleting registry components, and nothing has
helped. Certain search engines like dogpile.com work,
but that is it. Every other engine (Yahoo, google,
lycos, etc...) gives a 404 error when I try to search for
anything. I'm running IE 6.0. Please help!

 

[Ray]

As a start you will need to clean your OS from the
spyware. Download CWShredder from
http://www.spychecker.com/program/cwshredder.html, Spybot
from http://www.safer-networking.org/index.php?
lang=en&page=download and Adaware from
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/. Run them while offline and in
SAFE boot mode. Delete the red entries that Spybot
displays. Reboot.

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP]

First eliminate any scumware.
See
Dealing with Unwanted Spyware, Parasites, Toolbars and Search Engines
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm

Note that AdAware and SpyBot S & D will each catch some things the other
won't. Also, each needs to be updated before every use, even when just
downloaded. There's also a lot more to do than just those two programs.
CWShredder is also available here:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/cwshredder.zip
**Post your HijackThis log to
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/ or the Spyware forum at
http://forum.aumha.org/ for expert analysis, not here.**
Alternative download pages for Ad-Aware, Spybot, HijackThis and CWShredder
may be found on this page:
http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm.
If trying everything at that site does not fix the problem please post back
in the same thread.

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP, IE/OE
Please respond in Newsgroup. Do not send email
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