Piece of crap spyware

[TXHookem]

Something hijacked my IE... now, I have some search web page as my home page. I try to reset it but when I go back to IE, it's still there. Any ideas?

 

[WB_Rowdy_Yeats]

From Internet Explorer:

Go to your normal IE home page

At the top of Internet Explorer you'll see

Tools

Click on Internet Options...

Where it says Home page, click on USE CURRENT.

This will only last until you boot your computer. Then you will have to start over, remaking the change. Sorry I could not give you a complete and permanent solution.

 

[TXHookem]

Right now, I'm running Spysweeper. It's super slow but it seems to be finding stuff that AdAware, Spybot S&D and Winpatrol all missed.

 

[WB_Rowdy_Yeats]

Spy Sweeper will get rid of it. Just ran the problem by my brother.

 

[TXHookem]

I'm actually still dealing with it. I'm going to reboot and see what happens.

 

[TXHookem]

So... Spysweeper is preventing the program from changing the home page but it seems like something is still on the computer, trying to make the change. That and it seems like popups on Hornfans.com are at an all-time high. Is it just me? (Yes... I know I'm not a sponsor)

 

[ths71]

Sounds like CoolWebSearch. Good luck.
CoolWebSearch

 

[Texas_Rocks]

In reply to:

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[msdw24]

There should be some sort of law that prevents all these spyware **** things from being put on your computer.

 

[TXHookem]

Hijack This may have done the trick since there was one particular filename that I'd seen with other programs. They "cleaned" it but it came back. We'll see. CWShredder helped, too. I've run quite a few applications to check the system and I'll run them again tonight. Hopefully I'm in the clear. This should teach me to back up my files and maybe it is time to shop for a laptop.

 

[Rusk]

Some of the more stubborn ones you have to remove manually in safe mode. I had to do that recently.

There was one file that kept coming back after I deleted it. I went to safe mode, found it in the registry, deleted that, then went and deleted the file, then rebooted to normal mode and it hasn't come back.

 

[TXHookem]

Well, crap... every once in a while, some new .dll file tries to install itself. I occasionally run Hijack This to nuke those files but they eventually come back (sometimes a different file name). This one is a bastage!

 

[superwick]

make sure u have system restore turned off. sometimes system restore makes a backup of your hd with all the spyware in it.

 

[CardinD]

SW:
That's true, but system restore can also be an easy way to get rid of this crap. I had a nasty piece of malware that I couldn't seem to permanently get rid of. I just did a system restore back to before I had the problem, and that took care of it.

 

[score4OU]

Try this.
Disconnect your network cable.
Hit run and type in msconfig, then click OK.
Click the startup tab.
Uncheck all tabs.
Hit apply and system reboot.
Start tapping F8.
When the options appear, choose safe mode.
Run your software to remove spyware.
Go back to msconfig and select normal startup, plug in network cable and reboot.

 

[wolfman]

This tread really helped me a lot. I had casually read it a few days ago and forgot about it, then I got all of the spyware/adware crap on my system. All of the coolsearch crap and pop-ups really crippled me for a while. I was able to get spysweeper loaded and it cleaned up a lot of things but I stil had problems.

Hijackthis seemd to clean things up nicely. I also loaded registry magic from the same site where I got hijack this.
Thanks to everyone who posted info on these products you were a big help.

 

[texascuffs22]

This may be an easy question, but how do you do a system restore?

 

[plimon]

Start->Programs->Accessories->System Tools->System Restore

 

[tbone]

I have used Hijack this and CWS shredder and they have both worked for me.