okie doke. Malware eliminated.

It's your firewall. Find the settings for those websites and unblock them. Make sure that the little lock in the top right of the zone alarm page is not locked. Other than that, I don't know what to tell you. Post another hjt log so we can see if you have more than one firewall running as you did in the beginning. That would be a good place to start. I am convinced it's a setting on your pc, and a security related one at that, it it happpens in three different browsers. The redirect usually means malware, but as we've eliminated that, all that is left is a setting on your rig somewhere. Now to find it.

Thanks,
v

But I wasn't running two at the same time, what I meant was I turned zone alarm off to see if the websites still did not work, and to make sure that i was still secure, i opened up comodo firewall in replace of that for the 2 seconds that i was checking. After finding that having zone alarm off does not fix the problem, i turned off comodo and went back to zone alarm. And I dont know if you can even block websites in the free version of zone alarm. ahh i dont know what to do anymore!! It's weird that its just those sites. Is it possible that other programs that are not firewalls could be affecting it?

as it is not browser specific, it is doubtful. However, if you imported everything from each browser as you intalled the new one, it could happen that way. Check your security settings, and see if anything is odd in there.

How many sites is it happening on?

edit: I'm sure it's something on your pc, as when I entered the link in your first post (Search results for flowers - Free Software Downloads and Software Reviews - Download.com) I got a search result for flowers. So you are not being redirected, your search results are not showing up. click Search results for flowers - Free Software Downloads and Software Reviews - Download.com and tell me what you get.

v

When i clicked your link, I got to the page of download.com as if I had searched it myself. This is what happens to me when I search it in yahoo as "flowers download.com" i would get a link like the one you gave me and the page would load, i just can't seem to search anything. When I click the different flower programs on the list from the link you gave me, I can go to the download page but then when I click "Download now" the page wont load. What is also weird is the link you gave me does not even include the dw.com.com thing so that is why it is kind of creepy. Do you think it is actually "dw.com" that is part of download.com, not "dw.com.com" and it is trying to trick us? just an idea...

Also, this is the link when i search flowers, "http://dw.com.com/redir?usraction=37&oId=2001-20_4-0&siteId=4&destUrl=http://www.download.com/3120-20_4-0.html%3Ftg%3Ddl-20%26qt%3Dflowers%26tag%3Dsrch" and if i get rid of "http://dw.com.com/redir?usraction=37&oId=2001-20_4-0&siteId=4&destUrl=" up to the http, the site will load but it says no results can be found with those search terms.

And so if I have spyware catcher or spyware terminator or one of those things, it wont affect the websites, only a firewall can do that, right?

I dont know how many sites dont work, they just appear to be random ones like "www.sparknotes.com" works but not "sparknotes.com" or www.paretologic.com does not work, and some others I just can't think of right now. but i come across them randomly.

I just searched "dw.com.com" in yahoo and I came across this website Episode lists : JetEye.com : and it has all these links starting with dw.com.com but do not include download.com in the url. and I tried clicking them and they wont load. so its somethign with that dw.com.com

I copied the link with dw.com.com and got to the search page. This is what leads me to believe it's a setting on your system, not anything malign. When I enter dw.com.com, THEN I get redirected to the flower site, so I think that is just a transitory site. I think you've got something blocking your webpages, some security set too high somewhere that is cross browser specific.

so what could it be if it isnt my zone alarm firewall? i run spyware terminator, avg free edition, zone alarm firewall, spycatcher and so i dont know what else could be doing this.

what if I had malware but then I removed it with one of the spyware removers but when it was on my computer it changed the settings? spyware doctor got rid of some trojan which i mentioned on the first page and it said that it modifies homepages so maybe something like that...