There are additional issues, as well. Firefox has been reconfigured so that when I hit the “home” icon, it goes to bing instead of google. I cannot log into several websites from Firefox, including Amazon, Gmail, and youtube. I can ask this question in bing, and get a list of hits, but if any of those hits go to the Mozilla site, I get the “insecure connection” error message. Here is the text of the error message for youtube:
<Your connection is not secure
The owner of www.youtube.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.
This site uses HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) to specify that Firefox may only connect to it securely. As a result, it is not possible to add an exception for this certificate.>
If I open Internet Explore, I CAN get to google, and I can even get it to default to my search engine. I can even search for the amazon site and succeed in linking to it, but with the following issue: The first two or three hits, when I hover over them, will display a url that begins with <https://0.r.bat.bing.com/?id> (NOTE: I’m using the <> to highlight the suspect url; the html brackets aren’t part of it*) That looks suspicious to me.
Please keep in mind that the problems I am able to resolve can ONLY be resolved in IE. If it’s all the same to y’all, I’d prefer to not have IE open longer than absolutely necessary.
Additional information: I am operating with Windows 7. This problem began to show itself following an update to Adobe Flash.
•(The whole thing looks like:
I have posted this to a Mozilla support site, btw. I’m duplicating it here in case my PC doesn’t let me return later. Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.
That part is easy to fix. Just set google as your home page again in the preferences in Firefox. The rest sounds like a problem with the certificates for those sites being rejected by Firefox. That is possibly from either security software or malware replacing the legitimate ones with their own.
In the error message if you click “Advanced” and the details include “SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER” thisshould have the solution.
This is my thought as well. Either you have some antivirus software running amok, or you have malware. If you have antivirus software, try turning off “safe browsing” or whatever they call it (Crazyhorse’s link has some examples). If this doesn’t work, it’s time to try some steps to clean away malware. Hopefully it’s not anything too virulent.
Thanks for the responses. I’m running through the “how to get rid of malware” steps now.
Couple of questions: if a program tells me that it needs to restart the computer to complete the threat removal process, do I restart right away, or wait until all the programs have been run ?
Also, if the program reports that one or more files failed to get removed/quarantined (in this case a registry key), but appears to be giving me the option to delete it permanently, am I asking for trouble if I tell it to zap it?
Interesting. What’s a quick’n’easy way to check and adjust the BIOS clock (I’d REALLY prefer that it not involve restarting and interrupting the reboot)?
You haven’t said what you see, specifically, if you click “Advanced” in the error message you get. If it includes the words “SEC_ERROR_UNKNOWN_ISSUER” anywhere in the error text, and from the description it is very likely that it does, the solution is in the link I provided in post #4.
If it includes the words “SEC_ERROR_EXPIRED_CERTIFICATE” that would indicate incorrect date/time set on your computer but I’d say the odds are about 99.999% it is the error I already described.
You said you had just updated Adobe Flash, and they always try to bundle in some crappy third party software if you don’t opt out of it. Usually those include a free version of Mcafee antivirus scanner and the Bing toolbar. I’d wager those are exactly what are causing the two problems you’ve described having.