See What to do when searches take you to the wrong search website

Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs.
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

• http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
• http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
• http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page
• http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy
• http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php - Ad-Aware Free

See also:

• "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked

Unfortunately this particular problem did not respond to the malware cleansers I tried at your suggestion. I was unable to install the programs even. There is a happy ending, I was able to do an advanced system restore to get around the problem. My first attempt to do this brought up a notice that there were no restore points to work with. Happily this was not true. I use a paid version of AVG. It identified the infection was unable to prevent it from accessing the computer for some reason. Thanks for your suggestions anyway

If you can't download and install malware scanners then that is a strong indication that you are infected.

If the malware is preventing to download the files to the computer then you need to do that on another computer and transfer the files to your computer via a USB stick or via other means.

If using the above listed scanners does not fix it or if you are blocked from installing those scanners then ask advice on one of the forums that specialize in malware removal mentioned in the Popups_not_blocked article.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked