A while back i was getting strange search results in my search pages. after consulting with the avira forum i found that using google's dns server solved the issue. avira, malwrebytes, and spybot turned up with nothing. what influences the types of results a dns server gives it's user? and is there any way possible that this could be related to a bios virus? is there any way to find out if you have a bios virus?
Hi, DNS is like a big phone book. It matches ip addresses with things like wepage names or printer names or computer names. When you type in an address like google.com, your computer will first check in its cached dns. If it cannot find the location there, it goes out to its DNS server. If that server doesnt have it, it goes up to a higher authority DNS for the information, stores it, then passes it down to your computer. It would eventually keep going up the chain if none of them had the information until it reaches the back bone DNS servers that have every address for every registered website out there. If your computer has stored wrong or old DNS information, you will get an error when trying to go to the site. Usually, you can clear your DNS by opening a command prompt, go to start, click run, type cmd and it opens a black window. Then type ipconfig /flushdns and hit enter. That will clear your local dns cache and force your computer to check with a DNS server. Now if your default DNS server is giving you bad information, I dont think there is much you can do about that except for changing your default server which it sounds like you did. I think if you are getting your ip address from DHCP from your ISP, its going to give you your ISP's DNS sever as your default, so if there is a problem with it, it is something they need to fix on their end. As for having a BIOS virus, I havent really come across any of those. I would think Norton Antivirus or one of the other major AV companies could detect one. You would probably need to boot from their CD though to do the scan.
