Search Engines not searching as they should

[Keithuk]

Hi guys/gals.

 

I'm sorry if I've posted in the wrong forum as I'm not sure if its classed as Spyware Hell or Windows Security, either way if the mods could move it for me.

 

For the past week or so the search engines haven't been working as they should do. I use Google as my home page and what normally happens is you enter some words to search for and you get the results listed below. If you click on one of the links the same tab opens that site up and you click the back button and you go back to the original list. What has been happening recently is you click on a link and a new window opens and you get some obscure search engine up or you get porn. I don't mind the porn only when I'm searching for it.

 

I use other search engines on occasions in a sub folder so I can compare

 

http://www.altavista.co.uk/ http://www.ask.com/ http://www.dogpile.com/ http://www.excite.co.uk/

 

http://www.google.co.uk/ http://www.hotbot.com/ http://www.lycos.co.uk/ http://www.mamma.com/

 

http://uk.yahoo.com/?p=us http://in.yauba.com/

 

At the moment Yahoo is working ok but I get the occasional glitch in there.

 

Now I thought is it spyware or malware thats crept in. I use the Yahoo toobar so I enabled the Anti-Spy and downloaded and install the software. I did a full scan and it only picked up on a 5 torrent sites that I use. Now one of them I've been using for the past 4 weeks so I know its not that one. The others I clicked on them last night just to check them out so I know its not one of those. I've also noticed that you don't get the usual search help on Google. When you type something in to search for you get the list of words associated with it.

 

Its about the time when I got these warnings (attached) when I clicked on other sites and if I click allow then it want to download a setup.exe file.

 

Are all you're search engines working as they should do?

 

I didn't know I had any Windows Internet Security installed or is this part of the scam?

 

Can anyone recommend a good spyware/malware hunter?

[Icedrake]

My search engines work OK, and I think that warning might be part of the scam, so don't install it. I'm not an expert yet, so you should probably wait for Rorschach's opinion about your search engine problem before you do anything.

[Andavari]

Follow every bit of this that you can:

http://forum.piriform.com/index.php?showtopic=20120