Internet not working - DNS error

[rishirsingh]

I have an Airtel 3G postpaid internet connection that I use on my laptop. Since the past two days, I am unable to surf any websites. However, I can do so when I enter IP addresses of these websites. This, coupled with the timing of the issue (since 10th July) seemed like a dead giveaway that my laptop was affected by the dnschanger virus. So I tried all the suggested measures to remove the virus- ran fixes provided by McAfee, Norton, Kaspersky and some others- but that did not help. In fact, there was no virus infection reported by these scans at all.

Here are some intriguing facts- the connection works fine on my wife's laptop. It also works fine on my laptop when I connect to my company VPN over it (I am then able to browse all sites normally). Evidently, it is a DNS issue (going by this and the above-mentioned facts). But I am completely at a loss to find a solution. Tried using Opendns, Google and Airtel DNS servers, but the settings revert to "Obtain DNS server address automatically" the moment I connect the connection. Tried flushdns and all other such solutions that can possibly be tried.

Calling Airtel cusotmer care hasn't helped either. Reinstalling XP is a last resort that I want to strictly avoid. Would therefore greatly appreciate any suggestions that could help.

Thanks, Rishi

 

[gamblingman]

Please, don't do anything else on the computer while working with these programs. Perform all the below in normal boot, NOT safe mode.:

Please download Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware HERE or HERE and save it to your desktop.

• Double-click mbam-setup.exe and follow the prompts to install the program.
• At the end, be sure a checkmark is placed next to
  
  o Update Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
  o and Launch Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware​
• then click Finish.
• If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version. Please keep updating until it says you have the latest version.
• Once the program has loaded, select Perform quick scan, then click Scan.
• When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results.
• Be sure that everything is checked, and click Remove Selected.
• A log will be saved automatically which you can access by clicking on the Logs tab within Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

If for some reason Malwarebytes will not install or run please download and run Rkill.scr, Rkill.exe, or Rkill.com. If you are still having issues running rkill then try downloading these renamed versions of the same program.

But DO NOT reboot the system and then try installing or running Malwarebytes. If Rkill (which is a black box) appears and then disappears right away or you get a message saying rkill is infected, keep trying to run rkill until it over powers the infection and temporarily kills it. Once a log appears on the screen, you can try running malwarebytes or downloading other programs.


Now, you can generate a HijackThis log by doing the following:

Download the HijackThis installer from here.
Run the installer and choose Install, indicating that you accept the licence agreement. The installer will place a shortcut on your desktop and launch HijackThis.

Run the HiJackThis download.

Click Do a system scan and save a logfile.

NOTE: If HiJackThis tells you an error about host files not being scanned and you are using Vista or Windows 7, you must close HiJackThis then re-open it by right-clicking on the HiJackThis icon and left-click on "run as admin". If the "run as..." option doesn't appear, press and hold the SHIFT key while right-clicking on the HiJackThis icon to get it to appear.

Most of what HijackThis lists will be harmless or even essential, don't fix anything yet.

When the hijackthis log appears in a notepad file, click on the edit menu, click select all, then click on the edit menu again and click on copy. Come back to your reply and right click on your mouse and click on paste.


Post the logfile that HijackThis produces along with the Malwarebytes Anti-Malware log.