Member Avatar for kbb83

Hi,
I had a virus that I got rid of by deleting a folder in APPDATA in Vista. Now that it's gone when I rebooted I've noticed the following programs are unable to connect to the internet: Internet Explorer, my weather network gadget, Microsoft Outlook and probably more. Netscape, firefox, and bittorrent however are connecting. I read on the internet to reset internet explorer and/or reset to original advanced settings and that didnt work. Please help..thanks.

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Dani AI

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Good follow-up to and useful point from . The symptom list (IE, Outlook, gadgets broken while Firefox and BitTorrent work) strongly indicates a system-level network configuration change left by the malware rather than a damaged browser binary. Firefox and some P2P clients keep their own proxy/settings, so they continued to connect while apps that use Windows’ networking stack failed.

Why that matters: many Windows apps rely on the system proxy/WinINet/WinHTTP settings or the hosts file. Malware often toggles those (or corrupts the socket stack) to intercept or block traffic. After removing the malicious files you should both undo any leftover settings and verify the network stack and system files are clean.

Useful immediate checks and fixes (run an elevated Command Prompt, then each command; reboot after resets):

ipconfig /all
ipconfig /flushdns
netsh winsock reset
netsh int ip reset
netsh winhttp show proxy
netsh winhttp reset proxy
sfc /scannow

type %windir%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

After those, confirm services like DNS Client and any WinHTTP auto-proxy service are running, and scan with a current anti-malware tool (Malwarebytes or equivalent) and a rootkit scanner. Check the registry keys under Internet Settings (backup the registry first) only if comfortable. Also inspect your router’s DNS and firmware—some malware changes router settings.

Final notes: change important passwords if the machine handled credentials while infected, keep backups, and consider a full offline rescue scan or clean OS reinstall if proxy/redirect settings reappear after reboot.

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Member Avatar for techsheaven

Sounds like you were better off with the virus! Can you restore the files from the recycle bin?

Member Avatar for kbb83

No, I've emptied my recycle bin since. I tried searching the folder on the web with no luck. It was named tdulh or something.

Member Avatar for kbb83

Thanks for the help. After diagnosing my connection in IE it said go.microsoft.com couldnt establish a connection with the web so I searched that line on google and all I had to do was click automatically detect settings instead of using a proxy server in IE. Now everything works. Thanks again.

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