Beware... BEWARE....

[JediSonic]

I was at zone.msn.com when it happened. My computer froze up. This actually happens quite a lot when I try to use that site and AIM at the same time, and I thought it had to do with Java. Anyway, when I restarted I noticed quite a few things:

1) My desktop had about 8 new and unwanted shortcut items that went to casino sites and other things, including one that did a poor job of mascarading as the Internet Explorer application but was a shortcut to their homepage.

2) There was a blue toolbar at the top of the screen that seemed to be running independently, which featured a search box and more links to stupid places.

3) My google toolbar was gone, or at least renamed, and replaced with another search box!

4) Obviously, this software did NOT stop pop-ups like my google bar did, in fact I was getting spontaneously generated popups left and right!

5) My homepage was changed to a search site, and when I fixed that it changed it to msn.com

6) Now, certain keywords on websites, such as "job" and other words that could lead to advertisements, are now underlined and made into links to 3rd party sites!

So naturally, I was freaking out and I decided to let my dad handle this problem. The first thing he did was run Adaware, which (I think, although I left the room so I missed the details) got rid of problems 1, 2, and partially 4. Unfortunately, the toolbars were still confused. So I went to the "Add/Remove Programs" dialogue, and looked around till I found something called "Window Search". I uninstalled that, and my google toobar was back and the other one was gone and I didn't get extra popups any more
I still have that underlining problem to deal with but I'll tell you guys when I fix that.

Anyway, the EEVVVILLLL site in question seems to be lop.com, a search site, and I never found out for sure if msn.com was part of the conspiracty <_< >_>

[Heaven's Cloud]

I've had this happen to me numeorus amonts of times. I run spyware and it takes it away. I don't have a toolbar but maybe I should get one.

[LorentzForce]

isn't there another program other than AdAware that removes spy programs and such?

[madphilb]

Spybot Search and Destroy is also a good one... there are a few others....

HiJack this can help track down browser Hijackers....

Get rid of IE.... Modzilla/Firebird and Opera users don't suffer from these woes since the problems are related to the Microsoft problem...

...however if you're not going to get rid of IE, you MUST get all the patches and keep close watch on what new patches are available (as well as security risks). You can also get Sun's Java and use it instead of the one that comes with IE (Sun's isn't as subjective to security problems).... oh, and turn off ActiveX... you really don't need it for most sites (though i guess Yahoo's mail setup must use it for editing HTML messages).

[Danyasaur]

yes Spybot Search and Destroy is very good I'd recomend you get that

[Mithrandir]

madphilb is right. If you MUST use IE (and I can't for the life of my imagine a life or death situation where one would have to have it), at LEAST keep it patched and up to date.

[JediSonic]

We can'ts seem to fix the problem! We've tried spyhunter, spybot-S&D (which found 1 dll that it couldn't delete because it's in use), adaware, browser hijack blaster (which doesn't seem to work at FIXING things, only preventing them), McAfee virus scan, and something else my dad tried for getting rid of trojans.

However, we still get links on pages that go to search sites, and we STILL get a bunch of popups and web-pages STILL load slowly, and worst of all (in my dad's opinion) google always gives us ads on the first page of results -- I mean, we don't get results we get ads. And what's more, some of them go to XXX sites, and guess what?? Now my dad wants to format (DELETE) the entire hard drive to fix these problems cuz we've been working at it for 2 days and can't fix it!

I'm very very scared about losing certain files, such as StarSheep, especially since the CD-Rs we were going to use to back stuff up don't seem to be working

[Straylight]

It definately sounds to me like you need to reformat... I'm away from home at the moment and I'm currently typing this from a computer with a similar problem. If I'd brought my disks with me this computer would be wiped clean. Once your hard disk is reformatted GET MOZILLA/FIREBIRD as this browser is immune to the hijacking problem.

Downloading so called "free" apps like cursor tools, Smiley Central, commercialised file sharing apps (eg. the official version of Kazaa) and other gimmicky things is just asking for trouble.

[Mithrandir]

Try not using IE and see what happens. If you don't get the same annoying pop-ups, you may not have to format the drive. Then again, some people are drawn to IE like moths to the flame.

Inexplicably.

[madphilb]

I don't have the link handy, but do a search for "hijack this" on the internet (may be one word).... it can help find and repair hijacked PCs..... as well as spotting things that other stuff might miss....

Also, there is a particually nasty strain of parasite/spyware/adware out there that is near impossible to kill with most of the software, but usually you'll see reference to a program that can kill it off fairly easily if that is the one you have.

I'm not at home right now (wanted to check out some of the FMVs from my Mom's PC)... but I'll check around when I get home and post the links... I may have them bookmarked there.

[JediSonic]

WOAH... thanks for the tip, DJ! I just downloaded firebird and I must say I like it a lot better... not only is the hijacking problem fixed, but the browser apparently has a google toolbar and popup blocking software built in! How cool is that!

But... you think we should reformat anyway? There are other programs that don't work still

[madphilb]

Check out some of the extensions for Firebird too... I was checking on a problem my Mom was having with her recently obtained Norton Internet Security (pop-up problem)... and I noticed the slick ad-blocker that is included.

Firebird has a good AdBlocker plug-in (extension) called (of all things) "Adblock." You have to setup your own rules for it, but I've quickly started removing many of the ads I see on a couple of the sites I'm on.... and you can have it not download the image or you can just not show it on screen (which gives the site credit for viewing the ad).

I'll see if I can't find that info about that one strain of garbage that can get loaded.

[MasterDias]

I downloaded firebird but it seemed somewhat buggy when I was using it.

[madphilb]

Buggy? hmm.... it hasn't crashed for me once.... which is considerably less than Opera or IE ever did... Buggy How?

Anyway...

I've gotten off my butt and found that other program that might (or might not) fix the remaining problems on your system Jedi.

CWShredder (Cool Web Shredder).

Seems Cool Web Search is one of the worst of the hijacker/parasite/viruses out there... it uses every trick it can and then some.... and is very hard to remove.

CWShredder is supposed to be able to handle it... you can read more (and get the download if you want) here:

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/cwschronicles.html

This may require some reading, but in the end I think the time spent would be far less than running the risk of losing data by re-formatting your system.

[MasterDias]

Buggy? hmm.... it hasn't crashed for me once.... which is considerably less than Opera or IE ever did... Buggy How?

Well, it didn't crash but for some reason I've been unable to access any of the topics in the Anime & Entertainment sections of these forums while using Firebird. It doesn't recognize any posts in that section at all. IE works fine in that regard. Firebird has also run a tad on the sluggish side.

There's probably some preferences I need to tweak somewhere to get it to work better...

[madphilb]

hmm.... Sluggish I'll give you, more so when there are lots of animated GIFs on screen (frankly most pages shouldn't have lots anyway, but pages like the forum pages are bound to with the animated smilies). For the most part it's responsive, and I've added to any slugishness by adding "Adblock" to my extensions, however it's not any slower than Opera was for me, and my experience with IE is on a much faster computer, so I can't compare (IE hasn't run here in over 3 years).

I'm not sure why you've had access problems with parts of the site... I know that the pop-up blocker can be, odd, at times... pop-up windows you click on sometimes don't want to open right away, you could alwasy set an exception filter for all of CAA for that if need be (though I've not needed to).

I have had CAA simply not want to load pages at times... usually if I come back later I have no problems. Have you tried it since?

Over-all you might be getting the same thing that I did when I first started using Firebird... I had used Opera for a long time, couple years now, and I was very used to it. Firebird worked differently than what I was used to, but since I've been using it for a while I've unloaded Opera and gone with this full time... Mind you, Opera's a good program, but this is free and does what I want (and then some).

I do miss the MDI that opera uses, even with Firebird's "Tabs"