>>>Looking for suggestions to solve a strange problem. I cannot use any search engine. When I try www.google.com, my computer just saunters off into cyberspace and refuses to cooperate. Of course I cannot google "I cannot google". Here is what I have tried so far:
>>>
>>>It is my laptop. WIN 7 Enterprise 64bit. No problem visiting any other web site.... just cannot google or bing.
>>>
>>>1. Other computers on home network have no problem. I have ATT UVERSE with several computers networked. Only my laptop is affected
>>>2. My main browser is IE but I have tried other browsers, even google chrome but no luck
>>>3. I took computer (it is a laptop) to other WI-FI spots with same result
>>>4. Used MALWARE BYTES, a rootkit killer and AVG Rootkit scans but found nothing.
>>>5. Searched through all IE options but found nothing.
>>>6. Turned off Windows firewall to no avail.
>>>
>>>This is VERY ANNOYING!!
>>>
>>>Any suggestions??
>>
>>Are you able to navigate to any antivirus sites such as McAfee, Symantec etc.? If not, you're infected with something. I've had to clean up a couple of systems over the last couple of weeks, one of them was a brute - had to run RKill first, then ComboFix, then MBAM to fully clean it up (TDL4 rootkit acquired from an infected Web page).
>>
>>Warning - ComboFix is incompatible with AVG, if you want to run it you have to temporarily uninstall AVG first.
>>
>>Another thing some malware programs do is to change your IE connection settings to make your connection use a malware proxy server. Although this setting is controlled within IE, it applies to any browser: Internet Options...Connections...LAN settings...Proxy Server. If it isn't blank you are probably infected with something - or an infection got partly installed, enough to change the proxy setting.
>
>I can access McAfee.com, Symantec.com and Malware.com with no problem.
>
>Checked the proxy setting and it is blank.
>
>The problem is with IE, FireFox and Chrome so seems to not matter which browser I use.
>
>I have two hard drives on this laptop, one with WIN7 and one with XPPRO. Not exactly a dual boot, I have to change bios to switch between them. When I use XP, no problem with Google. It is just the WIN 7 boot.
>
>This issue just started recently. I was able to google from WIN7/IE before. I did however have an issue where while browsing, I would suddenly be redirected to a marketing site. That's why I downloaded the root kit killer. The root kit lliller detected nothing but the redirection sems to have gone away but that perception may be because I don't "surf" much because the surfing usually starts with Google. Sigh....
>
>Thanks for your help,

If you were seeing redirection, that's malware for sure. If you're still seeing funky stuff happening with your browser, I'd say chances are good you still have an advanced rootkit. One of the features of TDL3+/TDL4 seems to be search engine redirection.

Here's one site that seems to have some success getting rid of this malware (it's where I found the RKill/ComboFix/MBAM combination that worked for me): http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic386969.html

Also, with MBAM make sure you run a full scan, not just a quick scan.