strange computer problem

I've got a recurring problem on my home computer, some search engine seems to have installed itself and despite my removing it via the control panel add/remove software it keeps coming back. I suffer from incessant advertising pop-ups for American cars whilst it's running. I've run adaware at least 10 times but I still can't get rid of the bugger. It's fine in Mozilla, but IE which my wife insists on using suffers big style. Could it be the manifestation of some sort of virus

 

It is a virus type infection, some are called about:blank hijack homepage etc..
I spent quite q while trying to remove one, they are better at avoiding detection now. A reformat was about the only way.

 

It's spyware and very annoying it is too. Search engine or IE6 toolbar hijacks are common spyware methods. Adaware won't work for everything. You should definitely install Spyware Blaster and also run Spybot Search & Destroy. A 3 pronged attack usually kills of everything. Some of those IE search engine/toolbar hijacks can be annoyingly resilient though

Edited to add: Some of these hijacks are worse than mere spyware/adware and are used as a way to "clone" you PC for virus duplication and sending spam.

Michael.

 

I'd go along with what Michael and add that using the Spybot S&D tools you can lock both your IE home page and the host files. Every little helps but first you have to purge your machine of and nasty stuff that has taken a shine to your hard disk - it may take a bit of time and a fair bit of messing about.but it is the only way short of a reformat and a clean install.

 

Maybe its a good way to get her using Mozilla?

 

As auric said, it can take a fair bit of messing about and repeated runs of the anti-spyware programs to get rid of IE6 hijacks. Often I've not been able to do it without some manual registry hacking.

If you're up to that kind of thing then you'll find Hijack This! useful. It doesn't actually do anything but it does let you see just what is running at startup etc.

NB: I've never had any of these problems on my PC, my experiences are all gleaned from fixing friends' computers!!

Michael.

 

I've encountered exactly the same problems on my PC and have installed adware and spybot, but it only seems to relieve the symptoms for a while. The ads/links soon comes back. :grrr: Every now and then IE6 starts up itself and goes to some dodgy sites. ARGGHHHHH!!!

I use Mozilla and even that is sometimes affected. I click on a link and it sometimes gets "intercepted" and a completely unrelated page loads up. The only thing I notice is that under the File button on the menu I see the work "click". Back button does nothing. I need to use the File button andf skip back beyond the "click" to get back to the page I wanted. The good thing is that it hasn't yet taken me to adult/gambling/ringtones sites like IE6 does.

 

Well... I have been to see if I can prove the spyware theory with Firefox, and I can tell you this: I get almost as much, if not just as much spyware using Firefox as I did with MSIE. Every time I scan my machine, I get critical spyware and cookies found on the PC. I only ever use MSIE for hotmail. I only ever use DC++ P2P application. Everything on my PC is freeware / open source, and none of it is known to be spyware, so it must come from somewhere.

So the rumours that Firefox are more secure are probably true, but it is wrong to assume that this will cure spyware problems.

I will say however, that I have not had Firefox hijacked, to its credit.

I have a hardware router, and use AVG Free for viruses and worms, and Adaware and Spybot as memory resident spyware programs, FYI.

PS. I had one machine so heavily damaged by spyware that I just reformatted it. Even though I had no spyware on the machine by the finish, it still did strange things. Sometimes it can be worth formatting, I have yet to find that elusive perfect browser.

 

Yes, sometimes that is the only practical solution. I don't know what dodgy sites you guys visit to pick up all this spyware - I haven't had a spyware infection on my PC ever

Michael.

 

The beauty of Firefox is how configurable it is - I only allow a handful of sites to permanently store cookies on my computer, i.e. here, pfm, eBay, Naim, allmusic etc, cookies from everywhere else automatically get flushed as soon as I close Firefox after a day's browsing.

The other thing that you miss in the comment above is that even if you let Firefox allow dodgy cookies to be stored it is very unlikely that they will execute any dubious payload as they are designed to exploit IE vulnerabilities.

Tony.

(smug Firefox / OS X user)

 

I often run Firefox with the Java and Java Script turned off, now this works very well for the simple reading of sites like ZG and PFM but Java or Java Script is needed for Naim and a few other sites I browse. I know this sounds a bit OTT but by a quick visit to the Tools > Options > Web Features I can amend my settings in a flash (as the Naim site is loading!). Another rather good way to stop things gaining access to your kit via the use of highly dubious social engineering techniques employed by nasty people is to use the Adblock extention and then loadup a robust set of filters. This to may sound a bit OTT and unethical as sidesteps the click thru merchants who often set the popups in the first place but I find it will keep most if not all of the popups that could do the real damage out of sight in the course of a days safe browsing.

 

I found a mixture of spybot, this:
http://www.intermute.com/spysubtract/cwshredder_download.html

and this:
http://www.simplysup.com/tremover/download.html

Tends to remove most of these trojans

 

Meant to say, whereabouts in the country are you, if you are up Newcastle way I could take a look at it for you

Andrew

 

Search me guv, I don't use IE. I blame the bloody teenagers. If I do reformat/rebuild my PC, it'll probably end up running SuSE Linux 9.1. I'll just have to put with up with a different set of problems.

 

Thanks for the link Michael, Spywareblaster seems to have got rid of cookies from dozens of dodgy sites and set up rules to prevent them leaving cookies in future. Fingers crossed.

 

Have you tried Opera? I use that for all my browsing except when I get a few compatibility issues and then Mozilla works. I haven't seen Mozilla let though much spyware, but maybe it lets them through and just doesn't run them, which is still a lot better.

Opera really is nice, but you have to pay for it.

Another nice tool, though I dont think it gets spyware is Norton System Works. The 'Win Doctor' app cleans out the registry pretty nicely.

 

Yep I've used Opera. And I like it. I think it crashed a bit too much for me when I last used it, which is why I switched to something else.

 

Thanks guys, I'll try spywareblaster tonight. I blame the missus looking for ringtones for her new phone......That's when it all started.

 

That is the way to go (though 9.3 is the latest), this kind of spyware / virus / hijack is designed for Win / IE, change your OS completely and have safe surfing.