Firefox, Chrome, Problem

[zandre88]

Acronis True Image take a full image of the system. OS and all. Meaning that if you restored it, you would be right where you are now. So doing a backup at this stage is only pouring gasoline on the fire.

You can get these infections from so much. Even viewing a flash image can infect a machine now. It doesnt take much for an infection to get onto a machine but it takes much more to get it off, as you are finding out the hard way.

You dont have to go to random sites and click on random things. Just visiting Facebook can get you infected now.

I have not seen nor heard of any backup programs that will backup all of your installed apps and restore just the apps aspect for Windows. Personal settings and application profiles and all that are required. It is for this reason that people use tools like Acronis True Image, CloneZilla and FOG. So that if they come across such issues, they can just put the image back on their machine and be up and running within 15-20 minutes.

The truth is, you shouldnt be messing around with the Registry. 1 wrong move in there will force your machine to become completely unusable and cause you to have to reinstall losing everything in the process. So I would be very careful with what your trying to do in there. On top of that, there is no saying that copying over the Windows firewall registry key will fix your issues. It could infact compound them. You would need the machine you are taking it from to be setup like yours and not have the Windows Firewall affected by any other software. Things such as Comodo, ZoneAlarm, Avast, AVG and other protection softwares make modifications to the Windows Firewall and having such modifications to the registry key could hurt your system more than help it.

I know the choices are not what you want. But in life when are the choices available the ones we want? I already stated what you could do. Even being as much as a Windows person as I am, I still dont go messing around trying to import registry keys from other systems onto mine. That is only asking for trouble. If you wish to do that, then I would suggest heading over to the Microsoft TechNET Forums for IT Professionals. They might be able to assist you in this adventure. Something like this is a task that very few people should undertake, myself included. There are just far to many variables that can go wrong causing the system to become completely corrupt. I dont want to be the person responsible, nor anyone on this site for that matter, in suggesting something that can lead you to lose everything you have.

Thanks for all the information you've given me. You've helped me out a heck of a lot and probably wouldn't have known where to start had you not been giving me advice.

The weird thing is, ever since I deleted Microsoft Security Essentials everything seems to be working fine. There are times I get random pop-up websites on Firefox. Other times when I click a link on Google it actually takes me to the right site while other times it doesn't.

I'm not sure if the infection is gone or one of them is gone or what. I know I probably need to just break down and re-install windows but are there any other programs I could run to try and find all the infections and post a log so that someone could look through it and see what is causing the problem?

I mean I can live with the occasional pop-up and if I can get rid of the Google crap than I there really isn't anything else wrong. Also, the computer that I was going to take the working "service" doesn't have any third-party FireAlarm programs on it. Just the standard Windows 7 version. From what I've read it isn't that difficult to do.

I don't know I am going to explore some more options and if I have to than I'll reinstall Windows again but I mine as well exhaust all options before I decide to do that.

Again, thanks a lot for all of your help.

 

[luke127]

That redirection thing sounds like the Happili virus and believe me it's all over the windows 7 forums it's just nuts!