google/yahoo not working after virus'

[craigers]

recently my aunt gave me her computer to fix (it was so bad the only thing it was good for was an over-sized paper weight.)

anyway, i removed over 100 Trojans 50 virus' and 700+ malware/adware. ive done multiple scans with malwarebytes, ad-aware, and spybot along with anti-virus scans all return with no results now.

heres the problem... i have the computer hooked up to my network where all other computers on there can access ever site just fine except this one. no google home page (image.google.com and other subs work) and no yahoo searching.(yahoo home page works) I can ping both sites. i tried clearing the cache. changing the dns in the ip settings, and checked hosts.ics file. releasing and renewing the ip flushing the dns, and power cycling the router and modem.

the problem is in both internet exploder and firefox.

I dont know what else to do.
thanks,
Craig
(im new here, this forum looks like it gets solved more than previously used ones :) )

[kaninelupus]

To be honest, it sounds like even if the malware has been cleaned out, tinkered setting may well remain (sounds like something actively attempted key search pages in attempt to prevent the user from researching the actual problem... very nice.)

You could try a registry repair, but without knowing what OS you are running, is difficult to recommend a suitable utility. Also, just check any firewall you have installed to see if google hasn't been blacklisted there (although if you can ping, I doubt it).

Question arises - would it be quicker to simply back-up important data a do a fresh install??

[craigers]

i was thinking it was something in the registry i started going through it looking for things that didnt belong but didnt get too far.
i was hoping to avoid a reinstall. i was maybe thinking about doing repair counsel off the xp cd but she lost it and i run vista and linux so i dont have a cd.

sorry, forgot the posting etiquette, its been a while since i posted anywhere.

Its running windows xp pro sp3.
any additional information or input would be greatly appreciated.
thanks,
Craig

[kaninelupus]

Was the XP disc she had a full XP install disk or a recovery disk (meaning XP will be sitting there on a locked partition)? Quick way to see if there is a recovery partition is to use the Disk Management utility to see if there is any small partition sitting along side main partition in the main disk (usually Disk1).

If there is a recovery partition, creating a boot dick may be an option (although whether you will be able to access partition to perform a "recovery repair" may be another matter).

[craigers]

it was a full copy, i built the pc.

anyway, i think i found the problem. google.com, search.yahoo.com and search.msn.com all were redirected to the localhost (127.0.0.1) in the registry...
(and it only took me 3 days to figure that out and 2 hours of digging in the registry. lol)
Thanks for all the help and pointing me in the right directions!