A friend called me. Any search she would enter into her Internet Explorer 8 Google search bar would be intercepted by Avast saying it blocked the URL. I had her install VNC and I remotely accessed her XP Professional (SP3) machine. She had some coupon printing thing installed. I installed MalwareBytes and it removed 147 “infections” which were all related to the coupon thing. Rebooted the computer, downloaded updates for MalwareBytes, scanned again, nothing found. Tried searching, all searches blocked. Installed HiackThis, nothing suspicious found. Installed Mozilla Firefox. Tried searching using Firefox, URLs blocked in searches. Disabled Avast Network and Web shields and searches worked. Uninstalled Avast, rebooted, searches worked. Reinstalled Avast, all searches in IE and Firefox being blocked. I see that as recently as Feb 2012 there was similar problem with Avast identifying Yahoo with false positives. What additional info can I provide to get this fixed. Right now I had her turn off the web and network shields permanently.
Hi jjrowan,
Do you still have access to the malwarebytes’ log that reported the infections? If so, can you attach the log in your next post?
To get started, follow these instructions: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=53253.0 and attach logs when you are finished.
From there, a qualified malware removal expert will assist you.
Ran two MalwareBytes scans, first one found / removed many “infections”, second scan (after update) found nothing so I did not attach the second scan.