"CommonName/CNBabeIE", is that my problem?

[Lunaray]

I gave my grandaughter a slightly used HP for her birthday (1.6 Pentium w/XP
Home Edition) and it didn't take long before she got herself into trouble!
__________________________________

Symptoms:

When she connects to her ISP (Quest/MSN) she can't open Internet Explorer,
instead, a bunch of garbage pop-ups show up, things I've never seen before.
Then I noticed some program in the notification area called "108 Search
Assistant", or something like that, so I went to Control Panel/Add/Remove
Programs and uninstalled it! Well this didn't work, now I'm getting errors
referring to "CNBabe", "BabeIE" and "winnet.dll". I can't open Internet
Explorer except when her PC is off-line, if I try to open it when it's
connected to her ISP, it opens for about half a second and then closes by
itself. If I try to open Outlook Express, I get an error saying that it
can't find the server, even though I'm connected and on-line. Overall,
everything is
just a big mess and nothing works right anymore.

I did a search for "CNBabe" and apparently it is a nasty, malicious, spyware
program called "CommonName", that hijacks your computer! I found some
removal instructions but it's going to require manually removing lines from
the registry, something I dread!

Has anyone here had any encounters with this horrble program and if so, do
my symptoms sound familiar, is this most likely my problem?

I have a copy of "Spy Sweeper", I'll try that first!

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Hans Le Roy]

Hi,

That's known adware (see
http://www.securemost.com/articles/trou_3_remove_commonname.htm).

You best download and run both Adaware and Spybot. Before you start, please
read

Dealing with Unwanted Spyware and Parasites
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm

Kind regards

Hans

 

[Lunaray]

Thanks Hans, I'll try your links! These people should be locked up, or at
least sued out of business!!! ;-)