Issue with google display and results, on all browsers

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I have a 3-yr old desktop with a new SSD and a fresh copy of Windows 8.1. Googling is producing some subtly strange results which are consistent across different browsers. On other computers (which are running an install of Windows from the same disk image) everything is working normally. Some of the symptoms are

  • Today's Google logo (a holiday banner) doesn't display in the upper-left corner. Chrome displays the traditional logo, and FF displays a blank image spot.

  • A few of the results of each search are omitted or out-of-order

  • The Web / Shopping / News / Images / Videos / etc. links above the "10^10 search results" text are mostly missing -- the only available ones are Web and Image.

  • Some Javascript-y behavior is missing -- e.g. the dropdown menu on URLs, which usually has the option "cached", is gone. If I disable Javascript on a normal computer, Google displays a clickable "cached" link, which is also not present on the symptomatic computer.

These all appear in Chrome, FF, and IE. Also I am fairly sure (but not 100% sure) that these symptom weren't around yesterday. The only software (that I know of) that differentiates my computer from others I own is an install of Shadow of Mordor, but that seems an unlikely culprit.

Any ideas?

Twiffy

Posted 2014-12-23T07:19:11.173

Reputation: 21

installed any adblockers/update hosts file as of late? – Sathyajith Bhat – 2014-12-23T07:27:50.397

@Sathya I doubt it would be due to an adblocker, as most all adblockers are browser-specific, meaning that unless OP actively used all 3 browsers and installed the same adblock onto all 3, only the browser with adblock installed would be affected. Just a thought. – Ben Franchuk – 2014-12-23T07:38:30.447

Sounds like symptoms of a crappy DNS provider to me, try using a different one (ie: Google's or OpenDNS) and let us know if that helps. – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2014-12-23T14:34:19.487

Answers

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I had the same issue and tracked it down to some nasty malware that had turned on a proxy. Look at your proxy settings and see if you have a proxy enabled. The malware was also locking down the proxy settings so that no matter what I did the proxy would stay enabled. I even went and manually changed the settings in the registry. I couldn't find any anti-malware/antivirus tools that could find or remove it. I ended up just having to do a clean install of windows.

Johnny Russ

Posted 2014-12-23T07:19:11.173

Reputation: 1

Asked: 2014-12-23T07:19:11.173

Viewed: 96 times

Active: 2014-12-30T09:01:52.123