I’m running Windows XP Home and I use Firefox 4.0.1 with AdBlockPlus and I’d been using the free Windows Security Essentials software, I think it’s called.
The past few days, my computer started to redirect some Google searches, which I’d never had happen before. I’m not sure if it’s related to this or not. I did a search for “hydroxyzine” (which is an antihistamine) and when I went to click on the Wikipedia link, it sent me to wegosearch.com, which listed ads for online pharmacies and stuff. Since then, some other Google searches did the same thing. My computer had also slowed way down, but then, it’s old, so again, I’m not sure if it’s related, or if I was just trying to do too much stuff on the poor old thing.
So, yesterday I tried to restart it, and kept getting error messages right before the Windows login screen would come on. The message said something along the lines that lsass.exe was corrupt and to click OK to exit the application, and from there nothing would happen, the screen was just black.
I ran my system restore disc, and since then everything seems fine. Google hasn’t tried to redirect me since then either. But I’m wondering if what I had was a virus, and if so, could it still be hiding on here, in my backup files or something (I did the reinstall where it backs up your files first)? If it wasn’t a virus, what could it have been, and do I still need to worry about it?
I tried looking up info on this problem, but there seemed to be a lot of similar-but-not-quite-the-same problems and there were conflicting answers and I got hopelessly confused.
Thanks in advance for any help!