Stop changing my homepage!

AnneL

SPFG, Supreme Picture Framing God
Joined
Jul 11, 2001
Posts
15,946
Loc
Wautoma, WI USA
For some reason, one of our computers keeps changing the homepage for going online from whatever we set it at to about:blank. It has up to date Norton antivirus and firewall and we scan it weekly plus we also scan weekly with Adaware and Spybot. Nothing has helped. :mad: It is really annoying me. Is it a worm or virus or spyware that these programs aren't catching or is it a Internet Explorer glitch. This is a Dell with XP on it.
 
Its spywear. about:blank can be caused by anynumber of them. I'm gonna guess that if you update Adaware and Spybot and they don't remove it then you best bet is to go to the Adaware forums. They will walk you through the process of getting rid of what ever you have.
 
Anne,
I use those as well plus other's but Blank sliped in. It can be a REAL PIA to get rid of, but try:CWShredder first. I've some luck with that program. BUT (again) this homepage hijacker often gets burried in the regestry, not good and not for the faint of heart to remove.
If you want to read how to do it try: Removing Homepage Hijacker
I'm sure Mike will be along shortly with better advice.
Good Luck
 
I had the same problem, even went as far as to reformat my hard drive. Then by chance someone on the Grumble mentioned they switched from Norton to Computer Associates anti-virus. I downloaded their free trial version and it immediatly blew the adware away. Not only have I found Computer Assoc. version better, but it is a heck of alot cheaper as well. It is easier to use and I have not had one problem since its instillation. That being said I would listen to the advise Mike will have.

Good Luck
PT Framer
 
Ive found this site very good at removing stuff that others miss, but check each entry before you delete anything,as it can find files associated with programs that are not in fact adware.
Web based email is a source of this type of spyware.
http://www.spywareguide.com/txt_onlinescan.html

Mick
http://www.pictureframing-uk.com/
-------------------------------
The impossible I can do today,
Miracles take a little longer
 
Anne, when this happens, does your homepage actually default to a blank page? If so, what would be the possible spyware motivation to do this?

Before I became a Grumbler, I actually had my homepage set to blank on purpose, since I rarely visited the same site first on successive sessions.
 
Ron, it reverts to a page with a random search engine. I've only looked at it offline but every time it is different. It will have something like about:viocodin on it. We've taken to only logging on from that computer if we're going to a specific connection, like getting emails or microsoft updates. Then I know where it is going.

Dave, thanks for the links. I tried CWshredder and it found one version of CWS on there but I'm not sure if it deleted it. I also updated my Adaware and Spybot programs and ran them again. Spybot found somethings and deleted them. Unfortunately none of this corrected the problem. Looks like we have something deeply imbedded.

I also went to the site I got Adaware and Spybot from, download.com, and found some more info on there. Next step might be to try a program called HijackThis. I'll need to find a techie though to review everything it flags before deleting. The info says it has a tendency to find not only malicious code but vital files. :eek:
 
By the way, CWS is a nasty bit of Spyware. It stands for CoolWebSearch. There are many, many versions of it and whoever is creating this crap comes out with new ones faster than most of the Spyware and Adware deleting programs can respond.
fire.gif
 
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