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Can’t reach the Web! No Browser will load but Outlook Email is fine.

1K views 1 reply 1 participant last post by  NYKrumrie 
#1 ·
Quick background: I’m sending this via my Vista D: partition. I use it for emergencies since it was the native OS on this laptop. The problem I’m having is on the Win7 C: partition which I use 99%. My laptop is connected by Cat5 to router & modem. I did something stupid in hopes I could fix the issue of ESPN embedded video always crashing the last 6 month or so. I thought I was downloading the newest flash release but nearly in time realized it was a pop-up add not the real thing. I tried to stop it but too late. I got 5 new unwanted programs on my Laptop. I went to “programs” & tried to manually uninstall them. Some came off easy, others refused to uninstall. It was like the last uninstall didn’t work. I’d give it 15-20 mins & move to the next to uninstall. It would say. Allow previous uninstall to finish. I rebooted several times & no luck. At this point I could still get online with default Firefox, but an annoying new tab would pop up. I ran Malewarebytes. It found a lot of stuff & I quarantined all of it. I rebooted & now I can’t get any browser to access the web. They don’t even fully load to where you get “File” etc… Once you boot up the PC the last thing to come on is the little flag in the right corner with the warning sign. It says Firewall is off. All options to open the firewall setting or to just turn it on are blocked. “Action Center can’t turn on firewall”. I try manually & still can’t. My next thought was to back the system to a Restore point. I could only go back to right when the trouble started. The furthest recorded action was my trying to uninstall one of the bad programs. I tried to find something from the night before but no luck. I did the restore twice & both time I got an antivirus or firewall error that would not let the restore complete. I went into Msconfig & made sure to enable all services & all Startups listed. Every time I go back after reboot Avast is unchecked & Base Filtering Engine is unchecked. No matter what I do I can not get them to stay checked after reboot. I would go into task manager-services- selected Avast which is stopped. I try to start & get the “Access Denied” error window. I can’t run Avast. In Safe mode sometimes it loads then crashes before it can start. It just hangs with the spinning circle of death. When launching from “All Programs” then “As Admin” you can see it in the task manager 12,000K but no interface is seen. Any program that has anything to do with malware/spyware/ anti-virus loads then hangs with the circle of death. Sometimes you can not end process or end process tree.
My friend thinks the virus is blocking all programs that try to get out to internet. Its lone exception is Outlook Email. I have been able to send & receive them all day/night. He could “ping” yahoo.com” but can’t open any type of browser. My friend said all web-browsers use IE info or setting to make their browsers work. So he uninstalled IE & reinstalled. Did not help. Skype, kayako Live chat & Teamviewer service can not get to the web. When you launch any of these & any browser you can see them listed as active in Task Manager-Processes. Skype show 50,000K memory which is about normal. Firefox or IE are at just 5,000K-8,000K memory. Normally they would start in the 200,000K at least. All the same problems happen in Safe Mode & Safe Mode with Networking. I was able to run Glary 4 (not updated since April) while in Safe/network mode. It didn’t help. Strangely MS Security Essentials says: Protected. It even lets me update in real-time so I assume it’s getting to the web. Dropbox works if I close it in task manager then re-open it “As Admin”. As last ditch effort my friend tried to use Combofix. It will not load/install. It hangs at the half way point. (Output Folder C:\32788R2….)
I really would like to not format the drive & reinstall Win7. Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!
 
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#2 ·
----No One Replied back from this Forum but I got it SOLVED!! ----
I'm posting this to see it it might help someone else down the road. I was getting help from several forum but the one that fixed the problem did the following.
Recap of the problem:
The main thing to remember is the the bug, virus whatever it is will shut down any program that tries to reach the internet except MS Outlook Email. So if you install a program & it tries to update its flies it will crash & hang. I had to use a special program just to uninstall Avast. I could not access let alone turn ON Windows Firewall: I get error code 0x8007042c every time.

Here are the programs we tried:

Uninstalled Avast
Combofix (Had to run from Vista Partition. If run from Win7 it crashes)
Malwarebytes Twice (Had to run from Vista Partition. It run from Win7 it crashes)
Security Check
Farbar Service Scanner
MiniToolBox
Malwarebytes Anti-Rootkit
Rkill
Temp File Cleaner (TFC)
AdwCleaner (Absolutely can not get to run. crashes every time)
Junkware Removal Tool

Then:
***I ran Tweaking.com Windows Repair (all-in-One) & now I'm able to get back online! I already made a restore point. It's taken a week but my main PC is back online!!! I'm not sure it was a combination of all the other programs & Scans but I ran Tweaking.com Windows Repair (all-in-One) & it work the very 1st time! Good Luck All! i hope you never need this info!
 
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