AVG or WHAT!

My Dad's computer is an Acer running windows vista, and we recently had to do a system restore to set it back to factory settings via a recovery disk. I then hooked up the modem, then instantly set up AVG internet security on the computer. I then needed to search using IE and right off the bat i'm getting redirected so much that my computer crashed!

How can a computer that was set back to factory settings and protected by a firewall+antivirus+antispam get hit with this?

 

We got infected by a malware that made itself look like an anti-virus program. The thing had stopped us from using anything on the computer. We couldn't do anything but restore it to factory settings. You are right, the router could be infected. I've got to get that back to factory settings too, now. Thanks, if I still have problems I'll post tomorrow as I can't take any more aggrivation tonight. Thank you again. I'll post any changes.

 

Okay So I am going to go through the malware removal help since this time I cut out the router completely and still got the redirect. I can go anywhere on the internet as long as I do not use a search engine. no matter what Search engine I use or what browser I use I get redirected to some (seemingly) random page when I do a search. if I just use the page address there is no redirect. So I'm going to try the suggestions in the Redirect/hijacker thread. Thank you for the help I'll be back. I can feel it.

 

Well the crisis is over. The Redirector/hijacker was so attached to the internet browsers that it had even survived the system restore. Thanks to the Major geeks sticky thread about getting rid of the google rediretion and hijackings, I was able to get rid of them and set everything back to normal in my home's little corner of the internet. Thanks again to chaslang for all the guidence.