Windows 7 Weird Internet Connectivity Issue

[Karsten Jordan]

Hello you wonderful people! Let me just cut right to it, my internet connectivity on my laptop has been a bit wonky to say the least. Every time I try to open up Google Chrome, Firefox, Skype or even Internet Explorer, it insta-crashes and asks if I want to re-launch. If I do that, it just keeps insta-crashing in a vicious, seemingly never-ending cycle. But what's weird is that internet-reliant games such as Hearthstone, Smite and Steam games all work just fine. Chrome, Firefox, Skype and IE were working perfectly fine yesterday, they just seized up when I came back to my mom's house (where they worked just fine every week before this one). There were no changes to the firewall, and the internet has no lag on any of the games, which normally there is some, so it's weird. Nothing changes when I run the computer in Safe Mode. I've shut down and restarted my computer, i've run all the related options in the f8 menu at start-up, and I don't believe there is a virus, as I didn't use the computer all too much before and everything else works fine. I would tell you the specs, but I don't know them off the top of my head and I had to use one of the computers here to be able to get this question out. Best I remember is Windows 7 and 32-bit. Any ideas how to fix this?

 

[Trouble]

My first suggestion would be to perform a system restore to a point in time before the problem first presented.
Then I would suggest scanning it with
JRT from here http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/junkware-removal-tool/dl/131/
Then scan it again with
ADWcleaner from here http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/dl/125/
Follow those two with a scan using Malwarebyte free version from here https://www.malwarebytes.org/mwb-download/
AND
Check for a black hole proxy settings by closing all browser and going here
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Internet Options
Check the "Connections" tab, "LAN settings" button and uncheck all boxes.

 

[Karsten Jordan]

My first suggestion would be to perform a system restore to a point in time before the problem first presented.
Then I would suggest scanning it with
JRT from here
Then scan it again with
ADWcleaner from here
Follow those two with a scan using Malwarebyte free version from here
AND
Check for a black hole proxy settings by closing all browser and going here
Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Internet Options
Check the "Connections" tab, "LAN settings" button and uncheck all boxes.

Thanks for your suggestion! Unfortunately, my laptop had no prior point to restore to, and as all my browsers crash whenever I try to start them, I can't download the scans. Any other ideas, or am I just boned?

 

[Trouble]

I had to use one of the computers here to be able to get this question out.

I was kinda thinking that you might put them on a thumb drive and transfer them to the problem machine.
And did you check for a blackhole proxy server that I mentioned above.
And when Chrome and Firefox "crash" what exactly do they do?

 

[Karsten Jordan]

I was kinda thinking that you might put them on a thumb drive and transfer them to the problem machine.
And did you check for a blackhole proxy server that I mentioned above.
And when Chrome and Firefox "crash" what exactly do they do?

On the computers i have available to me, I am unable to download any new software without the administrators consent, not even to a flash drive. I checked for the servers, and nothing helpful came from that investigation. The errors that show up whenever I attempt to launch browsers like Google Chrome for example,the browser turns pure white, the search bar at the top doesnmt even have a chance to load, then it says something along the lines of: "Oops! Google chrome has crashed! Would you like to re-launch?" in a little dialogue box. No matter how long I wait nothing happens, so I click re-launch, the dialogue box goes away, only to come back 5 seconds later with the same message. I don't know what else I can say about that, because that's all that really happens. one day it'll get fixed. One day...