Identified by Verisign

Now I see the culprit. To the left on the address bar, I see a Yahoo icon. Yahoo has taken Google and much of MSN away from me. It likely did that when I restarted my internet hardware yesterday. I use ATT, and they are in cahoots. But I don't know what to do about it.

can you do a system restore.

back to before the troubles...?

It is not in Yahoo's self interest to do something as overt as block you from going to popular websites. Maybe something has self-installed on your browser. You might want to see if anything has been newly installed on your computer. You might be able to right click on the offending toolbar and turn it off. You might try a malware checking program also.

I have done the things you suggested. No effect. The last thing I did was click to make Google my default search. But when I clicked to go to Hotmail, the green address bar still took over. It also disabled my google tool bar. So I deleted the tool bar and then tried to re-install it. I was blocked from doing that.

Still have the same problem, but the logo in the address bar has been replaced with one by AVG.

Did that two times, rock.

Run Hijackthis and post a log. We might be able to see what you have running.

you gotta bug...

I ran hijack this. Got a message:
" Cannot find the C:\\Program Files(x86)\Trend Micro\\Highjackthis\hijackthis.logfile. "

I have a log file. Need to figure how to get it here.

In theory, identified by Verisign is a good thing. It's stating the page you are accessing is actually the secured page you want to be in the first place. The padlock is the symbol for an encrypted page. If you notice that in the address box there is an S next to HTTP. That's a good thing.


As for not being able to connect? I think the Versign is a pure coincidence. It could just be that Hotmail (a constant target of denial of service attacks since it's creation in the mid90's) is having a server problem.

AVG (if taken at facevalue) is an antivirus software publisher. Who makes your antivirus software?

Correction. I have this message.:

For some reason your system denied access to the Hosts file. If any hijacked domains are in this file, HijackThis may not be able to fix them.

If that happens you need to edit the file yourself. To do this, click Start, run and type
notepadC:\\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

and press enter. Find the line(s) HijackThis reports and delete them. Save the file as 'hosts' (with quotes) and reboot.
________________________________________________________

I went to start and found 'start up' which was noted as 'empty' and so typed the info into the search bar at the bottom. I got "does not match any files' or whatever. Don't know where to go with this.

I was using AVG. It so happens AVG expired a week or two back and I have been saving up to get new antivirus.

Can't access a few other sites I regularly visit, plus my google toolbar is gone.

That's a sign of some kind of viral/worm infection. I wish I could stay around to brainstorm but I only have 4 minutes of battery power in my laptop and I can't access my house fusebox.

Good luck. I will try and help you tomorrow when I get to work early.

I downloaded an antivirus program and scanned the entire computer. It found nothing.

Just found yahoo email is also not working for me.

edgar, I'm having the same problem. Message: Internet Explorer has encountered a problem with an add-on and needs to close.

The following add-on was running when this problem occurred:

name: yt.dll(I think that's the initial)

Company name: Yahoo! Inc.

Description: Yahoo! Toolbar.

Any help would be appreciated for edgar and for me