My brother’s computer has had this problem for almost a year but he hasn’t taken it it to get the problem fixed.
His computer works fine and internet browsing is fine except for Google and it’s related sights. He can’t get onto google, g-mail, google maps, etc.
I told him he probably has some type of virus.
Is this a well known virus that he got?
Is there an easy way to get rid of it beside taking his PC into the geek squad?
I’d think a virus would be unlikely, since that seems like a fairly dumb “payload”. I wouldn’t rule it out 100%, though.
Do you know what happens why your brother tries to go to Google other than “can’t get on”? Does he get a “DNS error: server not found”? “HTTP error 404: page not found”? Is it only “{whatever}.google.com”? Can he go to www.google.co.uk (Google’s British domain)? How about http://74.125.19.99 (the IP address I get when I ping www.google.com)?
I think this is a fairly common symptom of a whole bunch of computer nasties. Do a search on something like “malware google redirect” if you don’t believe me.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if anti-virus sites like Symantec and TrendMicro were being redirected.
Your brother should take some sort of anti-virus/anti-malware action immediately because it’s also likely that other bad things are going on behind the scenes.
You can even have someone play a joke on you, it’s easy to set up your browser to forbid it from going to certain sites. You can do this on a network level, like a work or on a personal profile on a computer
Sometimes companies don’t want you checking email, so they put up blocks. They’re pretty easy to get around.
Check if Google is blocked in his hosts file.
Word for word what I was going to say.