My son (who lives 2000 miles away) just bought an Acer laptop loaded with Windows Vista. He called me today upset because his homepage can’t be changed. He was saying the homepage was mallware.com but after searching through this forum I’m wondering if he means malware.com? (I can’t call him right now to confirm). Over the phone we tried a couple of basic things, as I am pretty non-technical but I’m a fountain of knowledge compared to what he knows. We finally decided to go to the original date when he bought the computer and use that as a restore point. He received an error message that the restore was unsuccessful and he still has mallware (or malware.com) as his homepage. He also downloaded Spybot Search and Destroy and it found some stuff and cleaned up some of it but he got an error message that some of the items couldn’t be deleted because he wasn’t the administrator. I’m para-phrasing but you get the idea.
He also said he had a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark that said he had a back-door Trojan or virus, which we are assuming is this malware.com
btw, he did not make himself a back-up disc when he first turned on the computer, so that isn’t an option. Just in case there is anyone besides me (and my son!) who aren’t aware of this, laptops do not come with a back-up disc, unless you buy a Toshiba.
Questions: Did he somehow in the original set-up of his computer, change his admin settings? If so, how can he get fix this? How can he restore his computer the tho original date he purchased it and make himself a back up disc? How can he get rid of the Homepage That Wouldn’t Die?
Please be gentle, neither of us speak “geek”
Thanks!
Cheri
