(solved) Why won't you work as intended! [PC issues]

Evilkitten

Hey guys, I have come to pick your collective minds. And forgive me if this was posted in the wrong place,

I been working on my friends PC for the past week and I am out of ideas. He's low on cash, so he can't afford to take to pro. He uses it only to get on the net. So it pretty much just a portal machine. No installed games, no photos, no downloads.

Issue: I can not navigate onto search engine sites. Like Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN, etc. It times out with a connection error. BUT, i can type in specific addresses of sites like Facebook, hotmail, etc. And it pops up fast and fine. The computer is at my house, so it isn't the router. I have 4 other computers on my router and none have this issue. And this is an issue for him, he's an old guy and likes to wonder or search the net. If he was devout to certain sites, i would just bookmark them for him.

What I have done so far:
- updated windows
- restart, power cycle, restart, power cycle, etc
-Installed and ran Spybot and Malwarebytes (sp?) Some issues found and removed, re-scaned several times to ensure all bad things went bye bye.
-Did a thorough scan with Microsoft Security Essentials, zero detection.
- Install firefox to see if it was just an Explorer issue. Same issue with Firefox.
-Check internet settings to ensure "passive FTP" was enabled in Explorer (not sure how to check that in firefox, nor if it mattered since Explorer still had issues)
- added more Ram, took 3 hours to run scans....UG (I hoard PC parts, lucky for him!)
- Google-fu for similar problems (on other PCs of course) couldn't find anything that worked.

The Specs:
Windows XP Pro Service Pack 3
Intel 2.79 GHz
1gb of ram (was 256MB!!)

I welcome any thoughts or suggestions to try out. I'm all out of ideas to try.

Thanks in advance

TychoCelchuuu

First open up the hosts file and make sure nothing is weird. Then open up the command prompt and try these:

ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

Try restarting into Safe Mode to see if that fixes anything. But I'm guessing this is some sort of virus, so if you can't just reformat + reinstall/restore to manufacturer's settings, then try running some more AV scans, like Dr. Web, ComboFix, and FSecure.

Essee

Well Malwarebytes just came out with Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit, which is still in beta and all (so use at your own risk but it should be fine), and one of the tools it comes with in addition to the rootkit scanning is a tool called fixdamage.exe that, according to them, fixes common things that rootkits and other malware like to break a lot. So you can kill two birds with one stone by scanning for rootkits and then possibly fixing whatever got broken. Maybe. I can't guarantee anything, but it's worth a shot?

MichaelLC

Would he be better off going to Win8?

Can still get it for $15 if a friend who has purchased a Win7 laptop since July last year buys it. Otherwise it's $40.

I'd really recommend 7, but it's over $100, and would need to buy RAM in either case.

I'd be careful about plugging that machine into your network. Probably would have kept it separate from your machines. Being a little paranoid, admittedly.

Bendery It Like Beckham

could be a bad LSP entry in the winsock stack

Evilkitten

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

First open up the hosts file and make sure nothing is weird. Then open up the command prompt and try these:

ipconfig /flushdns
ipconfig /release
ipconfig /renew

Try restarting into Safe Mode to see if that fixes anything. But I'm guessing this is some sort of virus, so if you can't just reformat + reinstall/restore to manufacturer's settings, then try running some more AV scans, like Dr. Web, ComboFix, and FSecure.

Tired all those to no avail. BUT when you said reinstall it made me think I didn't EVEN think of doing a system restore... I was so dead set on thinking virus or maleware or something nasty along those lines. Everything seems fined but that one issue. Ran a system restore, bam! She purrs like a kitten again.

Looks like it was one of the windows updates that messed it up some way some how.

So now his PC is clean, set up spybot and his antivirus to check whenever he turns on his PC. Also turned off automatic updates. I'll just manually check it when i pop over for a visit from time to time. I'll suggest the Windows 8 to him. But i doubt he'll bite. He's one of those old guys stuck in his ways. Atleast he'll be happy with the RAM i added.

Thanks again guys I was losing sleep over this one. Now i can go back to tinkering with my other collection of PCs.

TychoCelchuuu

Automatic updates should be on, basically. The number of times they will mess things up is lower than the number of times t hey will close a security hole that would otherwise be exploited.

MichaelLC

Yeah, that's a little concerning with XP.

Support from Microsoft ends April 2014. May want to look at getting a new machine before then.

Essee

Rather than turning off automatic updates, I would personally install each update until you figure out which one ACTUALLY broke things (how did you find out it was an update?) and then just have it not install that specific one. Because it's very unlikely that any other updates will break things, and updates are important for security, especially on XP. Even if one breaks something (and it probably won't), it's probably more efficient to come over and fix it that one time than to have to install updates every time you come over. Especially since it'll help keep him from getting viruses, which are much worse than just installing updates.

Also, are you saying you set Spybot and his anti-virus to check for things EVERY time he turns on the computer? Because I don't know about whatever antivirus you're using, but unless the new version of Spybot (which you need to pay to use the beta for) is insanely fast... that's adding a crapload of time to computer startup every day. Probably not a good idea for somebody who doesn't know computers. (I remember a family member was complaining about their computer working INSANELY slowly at startup... turns out their antivirus was set to scan frequently like this.) Like, a weekly/monthly scan, okay, he can probably understand that if you tell him about it. But having to wait a long time every time he starts up his computer would probably make him not want to use it at all. Which is probably not your goal. =P