Despite scanning a file I had received, without issue, I knew something was wrong  within seconds of opening it. The file itself disappeared from the my folder view and my system went into a ‘Microsoft minutes’ moment. I pulled up taskmanger via right clicking on the taskbar and ended as many non-essential processes as I could identify. I tasked an on boot scan and left the machine to it.

Couple of hours later… on boot scan completed I spot immediately that that security centre is disabled and security essentials isn’t able to start – without thinking I start to google ‘starting security centre’ and find I am redirected to goingonearth.com search results (with a blank webpage).

System OS – very high level view

• Windows 7 64bit – patched up to date.
• Microsoft Security Essentials – fully updated.
• Windows firewall.

Symptoms -

• No security
• No windows updates
• No System Restore
• browser redirection to goingonearth.com
• sluggish system

Having tried various goingonearth fixes and many, many scans using goingonearth removal tools and the usual anti-malware  products, each time finding that on reboot I was back to square one – with exactly the same symptoms; very frustrating.

My fix how I removed goingonearth -

• Run, with administrator privileges, Combofix. Removes an exe file from C:\Windows
• Run a full scan with Malwarebytes, which removed objects with a FakeAlert theme from the following areas -
  4 – Registry Keys
  1 – Registry Values
  5 – Files Infected
• Having rebooted, don’t be disheartened that you still have no security open services.msc and look for ‘Security Center’ – right click -> properties -> Startup type = Automatic -> Apply -> OK
• Perform an update of Microsoft Security Essentials (just download and install in situ)
• Reboot again.

By this point Robert should be your mothers brother.

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