Please help me: computer question

[tv_is_fake]

John can you leave this up please, hopefully someone can help me with this question:

Something odd happened to my computer. I usually search stuff on google and yahoo, but when I go to those sites, it brings up a totally different search engine called "RoyalSearch. net"

It's weird because in the browser, it says google. com or yahoo. com but RoyalSearch. net page shows up.

Can someone please help me. How do I get my google and yahoo pages back?? Please, any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Blue Meanie]

Which browser are you using?

[Zaius]

Sounds to me like Adware, probably introduced through a Trojan. If you're lucky you can uninstall it, but it's really rare to come across ones you can uninstall. I do believe that there is freeware out there that you can download to get rid of this. I think Leo showed a link a bit ago concerning this.

[Leo]

It sounds like a nasty case of spyware - best all-purpose tool for that it Spybot Search and Destroy. It's free, so that won't be a problem.

If you're running Norton Antivirus, that will take care of it as well. Info from the Symantec Anti-virus Research Center on this trojan here.

Also, it looks like there's a whole lot of things like this. Googling for "RoyalSearch removal" turned up this page. RoyalSearch isn't mentioned explicitly, but it's in the keywords at the bottom of the page. There's a removal tool there, see if it helps.

Long term, though, it would help to use another browser. (I'm assuming you use Internet Explorer.) Mozilla, particularly the stripped-down version Mozilla Firebird is a great substitute.

[Tigrazhia]

I got one of those viruses once, it was exactly like the one you're talking about... my husband is luckily a computer guru, but it took him a long time to clean it out, he had to go in the registry and pluck out everything associated with it

(the webpage was the first warning sign, I increasingly kept having worse computer problems after this virus started taking over my computer =( Those nasty bastards )

[sher]

i got that mess, too. eventually i not only had that piece of crap search engine in my browser, but also, i started getting about 4 billion popups. ended up reinstalling windows.

[sher]

p.s. wynd! where have you been?!!!

j/k. just missed seeing ya around.

[tv_is_fake]

It sounds like a nasty case of spyware - best all-purpose tool for that it Spybot Search and Destroy. It's free, so that won't be a problem.

If you're running Norton Antivirus, that will take care of it as well. Info from the Symantec Anti-virus Research Center on this trojan here.

Also, it looks like there's a whole lot of things like this. Googling for "RoyalSearch removal" turned up this page. RoyalSearch isn't mentioned explicitly, but it's in the keywords at the bottom of the page. There's a removal tool there, see if it helps.

Long term, though, it would help to use another browser. (I'm assuming you use Internet Explorer.) Mozilla, particularly the stripped-down version Mozilla Firebird is a great substitute.

Thank you Leo, those sites help me with my problem, mucho appreciated!!! You know your stuff, and I'll keep mozilla in mind.

[tv_is_fake]

One more question, for some odd reason, the address bar on my IE is not there. You know the box where you type in a web address, it's missing!! I have win xp and using IE vers 5 or 6 or something, can anyone tell me how to get the address bar back on my browser?

[haejin]

One more question, for some odd reason, the address bar on my IE is not there. You know the box where you type in a web address, it's missing!! I have win xp and using IE vers 5 or 6 or something, can anyone tell me how to get the address bar back on my browser?

Are your toolbars unlocked? Sometimes it happens if you happen to click on the address bar and accidently "drag" it somewhere.