No internet access 1

[MarcLodge]

When you know a little bit about computers, everybody thinks you know it all, so thank heavens for tek-tips!

A friend has asked me to look at his daughter's laptop which has suddenly stopped accessing the net. It's a Dell machine running Vista. Here's the symptoms and what I've looked at and tried so far:
[ul]
[li]Round at both his house and mine, laptop connects to router ok, but not to net[/li]
[li]Yellow triangle and ! on both wireless and wired access[/li]
[li]ip address ok in ipconfig[/li]
[li]v4 adapter showing auto assign dns/ip details[/li]
[li]malwarebytes and mcafee scans reveal nothing[/li]
[li]safe mode with networking works ok[/li]

Clearly the fact that safe mode with networking works ok means that all the drivers etc. are fine and that something it stopping it from accessing the net in both wired and wireless mode. I'm struggling to think what that can be as both McAfee and MWB came back blank.

Any pointers or ideas gratefully received.

Marc

[/ul]

 

[goombawaho]

I'm suspicious of malware. Therefore:

0. Run TDSSKiller and see if it finds anything. Fix anything it finds and make a note.
1. Download ComboFix onto a USB flash drive (on another computer if necessary)
2. Boot to regular mode and uninstall your anti-virus software. Yes - remove it. Reboot.
3. Clean out temp files and registry with CCleaner. Save before making registry changes each time until no more errors.
4. Reboot computer into safe mode with networking (hopefully you can attach the PC to a wired/ethernet connection vs. wireless because some wireless will not work in safe mode and you MAY NEED internet).
5. Copy combofix to desktop and launch combofix and allow it to do its thing. Follow screen prompts and do what it says to do/NOT to do.
6. When computer has restarted for the last time, check things out.
7. Turn OFF system restore to flush out anything left
8. Reinstall anti-virus and MalwareByte's Anti-Malware. Run a full scan using each (at different times) and see if things are clean.
9. Turn System Restore ON.

 

[MarcLodge]

Thanks for you help goombawaho. TDSSKiller found something and fixed it. I still went on and did the CCleaner and ComboFix steps and the machine has now sprung back to life.

Marc

 

[goombawaho]

Yep, I had a feeling. Thanks for the star. Glad that you ran the combofix and didn't just stop at the TDSSKiller. I've often seen where MalwareByte's either found nothing or found some things but Combofix found quite a bit more.