I can't get google, youtube on my mac desktop, mac book pro, and iphone. Wondering if I have a virus?

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Level 1

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I can't get google, youtube on my mac desktop, mac book pro, and iphone. Wondering if I have a virus?

When I open Safari and try to go to youtube its states the following. Safari can't open the page "http://www.youtube.com/" because the server unexpectedly dropped the connection. This sometimes occurs when the server is busy. Wait for a few minutes, and then try again.

This has been going on for two weeks. My son's macbook pro and my iphone get the same message when linked to my wireless connection. Yet, when I disconnect my wi-fi from my phone and use 3g, I'm able to pull up google and youtube fine.

Also, when I try and go to google's home page from my computer, it takes me to a chinese site with 789 at the beginning of the address bar.

I'm able to go to other saved websites with no problems.

I'm wondering if this is a virus or not?

Any sugguestions?

Thanks

Posted on Mar 29, 2012 12:51 PM

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Answer 1

iCare

Level 4

2,490 points

Mar 29, 2012 2:21 PM in response to rmumford

If you download and install the FireFox browser from Mozilla do you have the same issue? I am trying to understand whether this is an issue with Safari, your systems, or your network setup. You can download Firefox here:

http://www.mozilla.org/

What version of Mac OS X and Safari are you using? Have you checked for an installed all of the updates for your systems?

It might also be a good idea to 'Reset Safari' by pulling down the Safari menu from within Safari and selecting the Reset Safari option. You should also consider opening the Safari preferences and then click on the Privacy options so that you can clear either all or the unknown cookies on your system.

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Answer 2

seventy one

Level 7

27,424 points

Mar 29, 2012 4:14 PM in response to rmumford

Hello rmumford,

If it helps to ease your concerns, it is very, very unlikely you have a virus on your mac.

You could however, have encountered malware via Chrome which, from a personal experience, led to my having to uninstall Chrome and spend quite some time double checking for a version of mackeeper which nearly got through my defences. I know it came from Chrome ... as could have been the case with your Chinese site.

It's only my opinion but I ponder the need for Chrome when we have two excellent browsers in Safari and Firefox. Both have good, well run forums that will answer your questions ... whereas in trying to solve my problem with Chrome, it was the devil's own job to make any progress.

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Answer 3

rmumford Author

Level 1

0 points

Mar 30, 2012 5:01 AM in response to seventy one

Thanks for the replies. I don't have firefox or Chrome on this computer. This is also affecting my son's lap top and our iphones. I've reset safari and cleaned out the files and history as iCare has mentioned. I've disconnected Airport and reconnected. When I open Safari, I'm able to go to my favorites and they load fine. It's when I try to go to google, it states the connection has been lost. It's busy and try again later. Also, when I search youtube, it takes me to a chinese yadoo. Even when I use safari on my iPhone and my son's mac book pro.

Yet, when I don't use my network connection here at home on my iPhone and just use the 3g, I'm able to reach youtube.

I agree with it being hard to get a virus, I'm just not sure what is going on. I'm thinking it might be something with the network connection. But why am I able to reach other sites, but not google or youtube and get redirected?

Thanks,

Robert

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Answer 4

Mar 30, 2012 5:37 AM in response to rmumford

I'm pretty sure it's your network connection that it's causing that behavior. Possible causes might be:

- from your ISP:

- routing problems;

- proxy servers;

- dns issues;

- on your home network:

- your router(s) might have a messed up config, caused by any of the previous reasons

I don't think that it is the setup on any of your devices, since it would be too much of a coincidence to have 3 devices with the same setup mistakes (unless you previously had to done that in order to work with a previous ISP/Internet connection). Besides, as you stated, they work fine on 3G.

A good test you can perform, would be to check with Network Utility (/Applications/Utilities/Network Utility.app) and check for Lookup (DNS) and Traceroute tests. Check Lookup and Traceroute info for www.youtube.com and www.google.com, something like this (these results are ofc from my connection, yours will be slightly different):

Traceroute has started ...

traceroute: Warning: www.google.com has multiple addresses; using 173.194.66.106

traceroute to www.l.google.com (173.194.66.106), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets

1 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 2.764 ms 1.253 ms 1.168 ms

2 * * *

3 bl3-73-49.dsl.telepac.pt (213.13.73.49) 14.024 ms 11.705 ms 10.031 ms <--- this means the request has passed through my network, and it is already on my ISP servers

Lookup has started ...

; <<>> DiG 9.3.6-APPLE-P2 <<>> www.youtube.com

;; global options: printcmd

;; Got answer:

;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 17629

;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 5, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:

;www.youtube.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:

www.youtube.com. 83551 IN CNAME youtube-ui.l.google.com.

youtube-ui.l.google.com. 169 IN A 173.194.66.190

youtube-ui.l.google.com. 169 IN A 173.194.66.136

youtube-ui.l.google.com. 169 IN A 173.194.66.91

youtube-ui.l.google.com. 169 IN A 173.194.66.93

;; Query time: 47 msec

;; SERVER: 194.65.100.117#53(194.65.100.117)

;; WHEN: Fri Mar 30 13:31:20 2012

;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 131

One more thing: you mentioned using the devices through Wi-fi and 3G, but what about ethernet cable? same thing? Because it can be a wi-fi performace issue, although that would not explain why you are being redirected to a chinese server.

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