Gmail URL Redirecting
When you enter the URL www.gmail.com or http://www.gmail.com or gmail.com into Internet Explorer you get an error page and the URL changes.
You have no problem accessing www.gmail.com from another computer such as your office or a friends.
Symptoms:
- You enter www.gmail.com into your browser and you get the error The page cannot be displayed
- You enter www.gmail.com into your browser and the address changes to http:///?%20www.gmail.com or similar
- You have no problem accessing your www.gmail.com from another computer
- Trying to boot into Safe Mode results in a Blue Screen
Explanation:
The above is occurring due to a malicious infection of your operating system.
A virus and/or spyware has infected key files within the OS and is causing the url that you have entered such as www.gmail.com and possibly other url’s to be altered in an effort to redirect your browser.
Solution
Solution 1 – Fix your HOSTS file
Spyware may have altered your hosts file and as a result www.gmail.com is not displaying as it should.
Follow these steps to put it right.
- Click Start > Run
- Type c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc and click OK
- Locate the hosts file and double click it
- Edit this file and sure the contents of the file is identical to the screenshot below. The only active line should be 127.0.0.1 localhost
- You can ignore the first 17 lines as these are commented out with a pound/hash symbol
- Remove any other lines, Save & Close the file
If the file doesn’t open directly you will be prompted to ‘Open With’.
Choose Notepad or WordPad and click OK
Solution 2 – Read Virus & Spyware Guide
If the step 1 above did not correct the problem then it’s likely that your browser has been hijacked by a virus or spyware threat. Click Here for the Virus & Spyware guide.
Hi dears.I live in Iran.I need to your help.could you please tell me why i can not connect to the gmail??
thanks alot
Great! Deleting the other lines worked right away. Thanks!
Thanks lot dude it is very friendly repair process for beginner likes me thanks again
I have the same problem but with a mac so I can’t follow the instructions. Gmail and google will open periodically, but frequently will not load. There is no error message, just a loading time out.
This worked for me, just delete the other lines and problem solved. Thank you, this problem has been bugging me for quite some time now.
it doesn’t works……cannot find the above script under etc…
it says the below:
## Copyright (c) 1993-2001 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This file has been automatically generated for use by Microsoft Internet
# Connection Sharing. It contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names
# for the home network. Please do not make changes to the HOSTS.ICS file.
# Any changes may result in a loss of connectivity between machines on the
# local network.
#