IE won't open websites

[magneto125]

I'm working on a computer for a lady i work with and she can't get on the net with her computer. I checked it out and its a fast computer bogged down with spy/ada/malware. I looked in the taskmanager and a process named realsched.exe what using 99% of the cpu's time so i asked her if she used real player for media files and what not and she said she's never heard of it so i killed the task, I've seen a post somewhere that the file is some from of malware is it really?

I ran adaware and it found like 400 files/folder/keys......i got rid of those and still can't get on the net????
Except when i'm in safe mode with networking....When i boot up normally i can go into the command prompt and ping yahoo.com and it will resolve the name to an ip address but won't allow programs to access the net for updates and what not but it will in safe mode with networking.

The computer has the most current updates installed and i'm running out of ideas?????
I read one post saying try to register some of the dll's such as regsvr32 urlmon.dll?????? Is it worth a shot??
Try repairing the IE installation????
Maybe run system file checker?????
Any help would be appreciated....Thanks in advance

 

[magneto125]

Oops i forgot to mention its running windows xp home.

 

[magneto125]

bump

 

[kamper]

Just curious, did you read the spyware post that is stickied at the top of this forum? There was some interesting info about what order to attack in to prevent web access from being cut off. If it were my computer I'd probably just say 'screw it', back up important files and reinstall windows though.

 

[spherrod]

realsched.exe is part of Realplayer. You may want to try re-registering the dlls but you should also read the stickied post and follow that through

 

[eklass]

did you try an alternative browser, something better like firefox? is it just an IE problem or no-internet problem altogether? have you tried other protocols besides HTTP?

 

[rainypickles]

go to network connections and remove the connection you are trying to use. re-install it. i think i saw this issue before, it was because the TCPIP stack or something was corrupt, and you had to reinstall it. i think you had to uninstall something, and then reinstall it. it might have been networking altogether.

 

[magneto125]

Thanks for the replys i did try mozilla but it couldn't display webpages either ( only in safe mode ). The funny thing about realplayer is she's never used it and now all of a sudden its goin ape crap?????
I've heard resetting the TCP/IP

 

[magneto125]

OOPS...stack could solve the problem i'll have to try your suggestions....thanks...

 

[screw3d]

I think winsock is hosed.. try googling for it and reinstal it.

 

[wildwolf]

Check and see if the hosts file has been edited to point the computer back to itself, ie: browser hijack attempts.

I forget the path off the top of my head, but it's something like:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

You can open it up in notepad. On a "typical" user's machine (as this lady appears to be) there should be nothing in that file except the following:

# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client hos

I personally added stuff to mine (to map my local network).

However, alot of browser hijack attempts will try to edit that file to put something like
127.0.0.1 www.google.com
127.0.0.1 www.yahoo.com

etc, into them so that when you try to get to those pages, pings, etc, will only be redirected back to the same computer, understand?

From safe mode with networking, install, update, and run both AdAware and Spybot's latest flavors, then reboot the machine.