I recently purchased a PC from a friend. He's got some great software on there, and I really don't want to format the entire hard drive and start from scratch, but I'm running out of ideas. Help! This is the problem:

When I search for something on Google, the results will flash, but then the first four results (obviously usually the answer I was looking for) changes to links to different search engines. For example, I'd type in 'Samsung', and the first results would say something like "Find 'Samsung' on 1020search.com!" and have a link to this new search engine. I'm assuming this is some sort of local virus, because it's only on my home computer that I've ever seen it. I've tried all the software virus fixes I have, deleted cookies, the whole bit, but can't seem to shake this problem. Has anyone encountered this before?

Its a browser hijacker. Either try cleaning the system with Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, or move to the much less hackable Firefox browser.

However, if its got one virus, it'll almost certainly have more. Hence a good AV scan or format is still a good idea.

Is it 1020Search.com or was that just an example? That site doesn't even exist...

Thanks for the info. I have Ad-Aware and tried running it, but it did no good on this particular problem. I can't remember the exact url of the search engine links that popped up (I'm on my work computer now), but one of them was something like that. Maybe it's 2010search.com or some other variation. There were 3 other ones too, but I remember that one because it's always the first in the list.

I have a feeling that it came from one of those search toolbars that I had to get rid of...those were a pain to ditch also. It's a great machine, but it is obvious that he (and his even dumber roommate) downloaded stuff with very little discretion.