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IE 6 hijacked?

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16 replies

by abcs86 Nov 1, 2004 last reply Nov 2, 2004

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IE 6.0.2800.1106
Last Friday, I was looking up some health plan information, when I accidentally clicked on the wrong choice (sounds like one of those eons of political ads) for a download. Well, there were at least 3 or 4 programs that got downloaded, and I went through the painful process of eradicating them, having to go into Safe mode to delete a couple of them manually. Still, I'm getting those annoying pop-up queries on various websites, even this one, to install such-and-such program. I have always responded "no," but they keep "popping up" periodically. How can I cleanse my computer's "soul" of this garbage? I did not have this problem before-hand. OS is 98SE. Thank you!

16 replies

by statykserver Nov 1, 2004

Download these programs and do a scan of your system

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/

These are some if not the most popular adware removal software apps.

by abcs86 Nov 1, 2004

Nope, I've run both of these, my error in not mentioning this.
Another clue: whenever I do a Google search, I get a second search window.

by manitechnicalpost Nov 1, 2004

Did U try cleaning your temp internet Files from Internet Options under the Tools menu in the Internet Explorer. Try Clearing the "Delete Cookies" and "Delete Files" also Get the history Cleared. These are the buttons Located on the First screen available in the Internet Options.

by abcs86 Nov 1, 2004

I had already done this one, too.

by abcs86 Nov 1, 2004

I had already done this one, too.

by abcs86 Nov 1, 2004

Guess I should've added:
I've run Ad-Aware and Spybot Search and Destroy. Also, these ads appear all the time, not just when IE is open. For instance, I just returned to my PC, and there were a bunch of prompts for installing software even though IE was *not* open.

by statykserver Nov 1, 2004

Well lets think about what causes these kind of problems in a computer .....? Unless your computer recently developed an evil mind of its own ...the answer is spyware, adware, and viruses. (Or at least the root of the problem) You said you already scanned your system with spybot and adaware (and I guess cleaned it out of what was found), removed all suspicious programs (even in safe mode)and are still experiencing problems. Deleting all temporary files in the system is also good as mentioned above.Also using msconfig (from the run command)to stop any unwanted programs from loading at startup is also helpful. (but I think you've tried that as well) I only have two other options for a computer like this one. 1. Restore the registry since it was just friday that this might have started. (Boot with a 98 floppy and run scanreg / restore from the command line) and if that also fails then finally 2. Backup your data files and reinstall the operating system.

Good luck

by statykserver Nov 1, 2004

Also Before reinstalling the os just to be thorough you should also check your win.ini, autoexec.bat, and config.sys files for any suspicious startup files.

by abcs86 Nov 2, 2004

Actually, the above answer wasn't it, but your previous answer was closest. I downloaded the latest version of Ad-Aware, which "went to town" on the mess-about 153 or so varmints are now gone, and so far, so good. The older version did not pick up these guys.

by rindi1 Nov 2, 2004

Turn of your windows messenger service. you can use msconfig to keep unwanted programs from starting up when windows boots. I'd just leave essential programs like antivirus software in there.

by abcs86 Nov 2, 2004

Yep, I had gone through msconfig. Thanks, though.

by yago50 Nov 2, 2004

I had the same problem to and there were two culprit in partnership, LQ & Elite ToolBar. I looked and tried alot of solutions. I became a pro in deletion of registry keys and folder files, till I came across Trendmicro site. I downloaded A scanner from them and had a certain trojan in which I got the patch from them which Microsofts fixes didn't do anything. Thanks to them they came out and with constant maintenance from spybot and spysweeper I'm staying pretty clean of Adware.

by abcs86 Nov 2, 2004

I'll keep that in mind for future reference. Thanks. I have Spysweeper, too, but not on this PC. It finds a ton of stuff. So does Norton Anti-Virus. I often wonder whether the items found are actually legitimate sometimes. In this case, they were.