need some advice/help with computer

In My Humble Opinion
1

I came here because this is one of the few places on the internet I can get to right now and I’m pretty confident someone here can help me.

The background;
last night I’m flitting about on the internet when I realize my browser is laggy and returning “page cannot be displayed, check connection settings” a lot. Ok, run update, run virus and malware scan (nothing found) restart machine. Problem gets worse, hmm. Poke around a bit, checking various settings, nothing seems out of place, problem gets worse. HMMMM, screw it, big guns time, system restore to a week ago (time of last running of update). No improvement, possibly slight worsening of problem. Looking at internet options under the advanced tab, I notice something new, a little info thingy that says “some settings are managed by your system administrator” the word settings seems to be a link to something but doesn’t actually seem to do anything.

The info; Samsung rv711 laptop, windows 7 home premium sp 1, ie 11 update version 11.0.43

hopefully that’s at least enough info to start with.

The questions, what the hell happened to my machine and how do I get to where my system administrator controls are and wrest them back from who/whatever took them over?

2

Is this a work laptop or your own? I get that message on my home PC because I have it linked to a WSUS server.

And why are you suspecting your machine and not the connection itself?

3

my personal machine at home.
I suppose it could be the connection, I didn’t think to reset the router, but it seems that mine is the only machine in my house having this problem. Also, the systems administrator message in internet options is something I’ve never seen before.
The latest thing since my OP is that now, if I look up a site, like ebay or amazon or search something like barbershops in my area and then try to go to those sites or to adjust search settings, my browser won’t let me go to those places at all or allow me to adjust search settings. I don’t get the “page cannot be displayed” message or anything, my browser just sits there, and does nothing, or spins for a second or two or twenty and then returns to the page I was trying to navigate away from.

4

Okay, that others on your home network aren’t having problems is crucial. You’ve picked up something. Try browsing with Chrome instead. Failing that, try a system restore to a month or so ago.

5

whelp, reset the router, just in case, and did a restore to a point about a month and a week back in time, no luck. Unless there are any other suggestions, its starting to look like I’m going to have to take it to the shop and have it worked on. And reset the passwords on every account and every device this thing has been connected to (sigh what a pita). Wish I knew where I picked up whatever it is if its infected, so I can not go there again. Think I’m gonna ask the shop to save a copy of it, whatever malicious software they find if any, so I can send it in to malwarebytes.

6

What about other applications that use the internet? Skype, iTunes, etc. If those work ok, then what about other web browsers? These answers will help pinpoint where the actual problem is.

7

Something else to consider: are you using a wireless connection to the router? If you are, try a wired connection. And I’ll repeat the request to try a different browser.

Two other things: at a Command Prompt type

ping 8.8.8.8

and press enter. You should get something like


C:\Users\...>ping 8.8.8.8

Pinging 8.8.8.8 with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=24ms TTL=57
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=57
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=57
Reply from 8.8.8.8: bytes=32 time=21ms TTL=57

Ping statistics for 8.8.8.8:
    Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 4, Lost = 0 (0% loss),
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
    Minimum = 21ms, Maximum = 24ms, Average = 21ms

Then type

tracert 8.8.8.8

and press enter. You should get something like


C:\Users\...>tracert 8.8.8.8

Tracing route to google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

  1    <1 ms    <1 ms    <1 ms  XXXX.YYYY.local [192.168.1.254]
  2     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  3     *        *        *     Request timed out.
  4    20 ms    20 ms    20 ms  31.55.XXX.YYY 
  5    21 ms    20 ms    20 ms  195.99.127.218
  6    21 ms    21 ms    23 ms  peer5-hu0-6-0-0.telehouse.ukcore.bt.net [195.99.127.19]
  7    19 ms    19 ms    19 ms  109.159.253.67
  8    22 ms    21 ms    21 ms  108.170.246.193
  9    22 ms    22 ms    22 ms  216.239.58.81
 10    20 ms    21 ms    21 ms  google-public-dns-a.google.com [8.8.8.8]

Trace complete.

I’ve anonymised the above output. Please share your results.