I am sorry to post this un-crossfire related subject, but I am in a quandry and need help. I know many of you are quite knowledgable of PCs so here goes...

A couple of days ago I started getting pop-up ads. I have heard this is common so it did not worry me. One thing I did not notice right away is that for some unknown reason my home page changed to some sort of search page. There is no identifying information on the page. I right click all over the page and it does not bring up the properties window at all. I have tried to change the homepage default and it just switches itself back to this new page. Another issue with it is that on other pages, it will highlite keywords and when you click on the word it takes you to that sites search results on that word. When I perform a search on Yahoo! a seperate window pops up with that sites results.

This is driving me insane! :cry:

I have defraged, disk cleanup, cleared cookies, deleted temporary files, cleared history, installed spy bot and ad-ware.

Have any of you seen this before? What can I do?

Thank you in advance. I really appreciate you taking the time to help!

 

Do you have Norton or McAfee?

 

Welcome to the world of "hi-jack" software, I just cleaned my daughter's system of this stuff. Norton or others can help you remove it. You can also
look for packages that are installed on your system, "My Way" or something along that name, also "Open Site" is another, remove them.

 

and if that doesn't work you might have to reformat. You could try a system restore but I doubt that would do it.

 

Hi,

You might want to download a program called Adaware...http://www.lavasoftusa.com. Look at the left top section, and download the 3rd one down.

It will detect those tracking sites that are following you. After you run the program, click on all that it shows...then delete them.

I run this program, at least once a week. And it's free!!

 

http://www.komando.com/

try that site. kim kommando has a radio show dealing with that kind of stuff and she's got a bunch of ways to attack your problem. all free.

if your operating system has a "system restore" like xp or "go back" like some gateways, you can revert the drive to a time before the trouble started. you will lose anything done since then but you'll be clean.

good luck


dan

 

Go to the spysweeper site and download the free one - it should scan the memory and clean it out. You will probably freak out on how much spyware you actually have on your system. I have not tried the adaware that was suggested yet...

http://www.spysweeper.com/

-marc

btw - this belongs in the off topic folder...

 

Adaware is the best. I have fixed many systems that were thought to be unfixable with this program. And I am a pc technician and I swear by it.

 

ad-aware is great but LVXFIRE said she/he has it. I'd do a system restore and if that doesn't work you're probably gonna have to reformat. What kind of computer do you have?

 

you should never have to format a hard drive, there are many, many alternatives to that...

first try another program... at worse you would have to check some spots in the registery to see what is going on but i have yet to see an add pop-up program that spysweeper did not find lingering in memory. Also go to google and download the google bar, it is the best pop up blocker I have yet used.

-marc

 

Huh? I would reformat my hard drive every 8-12 months.

 

Cruiser, I finally figured out that you can right click in the box that shows "Found Objects" and select tham all. Ad Aware 6.181, at least.

 

you can get a fresh install of windows if that is what you are thinking with out FORMATTING your hard drive... why lose all the data?

-marc

 

I get that same search page (about:blank) and can't get it off my computer. I bought and used SpySweeper on the advice of CompUSA. It is better but is still there. SpySweeper lets me not use it as my default home page so it's in the background and out of the way.
If you find a way to make it disappear, short of formatting the hard disk, please post it.
Thanks and good luck,

 

Hi Leebea,

I am kinda confused. Are you trying to get your home page, thru Internet Explorer to be a certain page? Like Google for a search engine? You can change your home page by going to your Start button, then Settings, then Control Panel, then Internet Options, and change it there.

If that is not the problem, please post again, what you what to change. We will see if one of us can help again

 

Cruiser, I did that and "about:blank" would reset itself as the default every time I hit the "home" key or restarted the computer. It doesn't do it anymore since I installed SpySweeper. It's still there but not active. I'm ok with it so long as it doesn't bother me. I still get the popups that say my computer may have spyware but I just close them.

 

Somehow I got Spysweeper starting on my computer, it was running, sh owing me tons of spyware it found. But before I wanted to buy it, I ran Adaware....seems Adaware caught all that Spysweeper had, and at no cost.

Try running Adaware again, delete all it finds and see if they go away Is sure like Adaware <g>

 

Good article about spyware and suggestions how to deal with it:

http://www.wired.com/news/infostruct...,63978,00.html