Interresting issue. Address Bar (IE) not auto-adding 'http://' to addresses

[Vigilante]

So check it out, IE will not go to any page unless you manually type "http://" into the address bar. If you just type www.something.com, it won't even attempt to open, just sits there, but add http://www.something.com and it goes just fine. No 404 page or error page of anykind, it just sits there. If there is a page already open, it just stays on that page.

The system suffered from some malware and a virus. But those are gone now. It's been scaned with a dozen tools, HJT is clean. I've reregistered a bunch of DLLs for fixing activex. I've reset the winsock, deleted hosts files, checked windows updates. And more.
Firefox doesn't have the problem.

I updated to IE 7 Beta 2 and it has the same issue! My googling isn't turning up much for this issue.

I know the system is clean, but the malway it did have, probably muffed something in the registry or a file somewhere.

So how can I get IE to automatically add http:// to URLs again? Anybody seen this nonesense before?
thx

 

[SOcRatEs]

Lost http prefix in URLs

Vigil try here Lost http prefix in URLs

G'Luck

 

[Vigilante]

lol, fixed it now.

Apparenlty it has to do more with the address bar "autosearch" feature.

This has the procedure.
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...en-us/find_change_search_engine.mspx?mfr=true

I set it to basic search, and then IE worked suddenly. So I set it back to companion, and it still worked. It now is auto-adding the http:// to what I type.
Very weird. But fixed now.

 

[Vigilante]

Woops, you posted right when I did. Yes those must be the registry keys I needed to know. Definitely adding that to my favs. I guess the search settings reset those.

thx