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Is CoolWebSearch really Cool?

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by admin 1 view

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Man, I have seen so many variants of this on client machines but never like this one.....

2 seperate instances by completely seperate clients in the last week again- both on laptops used for billing by independant contractors. The first one, a reletively easy Shredder run followed with some manual cleaning, but the other,,, ooh La La! I can't believe this thing!

Turn off XP restore Run CWS Shredder, do manual clean-up of .dlls and registry, use the web a gazillion times with broadband and monitor with Ethereal on a seperate box and it's fine. No problems at all.

However, as soon as you use the clients dial-up with MSN 8, it re-appears with a different URL as the main search each time. The latest one is exploiting the about:blank problem after 2 previous addresses were fixed that 1. was showing garbled addresses and 2. was redirecting legitmate sites to their page. So, now I'm trying to figure out how I can capture everything going in and out of the box on a dial up or... hmmmmm maybe I'll just back up the data wipe and re-install... some problems are better avoided than confronted perhaps... Argh!!!

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by 1stladytech

Check the hosts file, this nasty tends to put many entries into the hosts. One thing that we have used with good success is to run SpyBot Search and Destroy after CWShredder, making sure that you immunize the system. The new version also has a feature called Tea Timer (change to Advanced mode, under the tools section) that will warn you of any registry changes as they happen. That will give you a better feel for where this is punching back in at. Also try HijackThis, very useful tool for removing entries from the reg that other programs may miss. Good luck.

Vickie

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