Quote:

Pat, it only took you a couple hours to find me.

After weeks and weeks of batteling this problem I found a solution. I was that close to a total disk reformat and reinstall, but then tried one last thing which cost me ~$21 since the demo adware program only detected the problem and I needed to pay to get it removed, but it did it, which was well worth the cost. It is indeed malware and it is just a matter of finding the right adware program which does the job. Now I did not try them all, but I did try many of the free ones and they did not work until I was referred to ... wait for it, wait for it, Hitmanpro at http://www.surfright.nl/en combined with free TSSKiller at http://support.kaspersky.com/faq/?qid=208283363

Now hitmanpro is claiming they can do it all, but I did use TSSKiller first based on advice to combine the two applications. If your still stuck we should likely chat via phone. Let me know.



the thing about this particular bug that makes it difficult is that it has variants, and what works for one variant doesn't work for the other. I downloaded TSSKiller and HitManPro and ran them both. Neither one reported anything more than tracking cookies. I asked my daughter when she started being redirected, and she said it was Memorial day weekend... so we did a system restore to a point that was saved before then. So far so good. But, since it is a boot sector thing, I have a sneaking suspicion that when she powers down and brings it back up again, we may still have a problem. Having said that, we DID power down 3 or 4 times this evening, and each time it came back up without redirection

The MS forum indicated that a system restore does not fix the problem

FINGERS CROSSED-O-METER
NAH_____________/_YEAH

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ey71h8ep047758h/AAC12jNM0Hz9Q8zsh5iDeqNHa?dl=0