Homepage help

[spider]

Every time I boot up my computer I have it set to a
different homepage than I want it to. So I change it back
to Yahoo and it works fine until i turn off the computer.
When i turn it back on its set to a different homepage
again. Please help! Its really annoying!
the homepage that it resets to is searchdot.net
and i want it to be yahoo.com.

thanks,
spider

 

[none]

Goto your add/remove programs and remove any/all
instances of the searchdot.com - and do that same in your
registry (back it up first though). My best guess is
there is something in your registry that keeps setting
your homepage to that stupid website after ever reboot.

 

[Nick G]

Your system has most likely been highjacked or some spyware has gotten onto
your system. Use either Ad-aware or SpyBot to get rid of the problem, both
are freeware.
Get Ad-aware here: http://www.lavasoft.de/
Get SpyBot here: http://spybot.eon.net.au/index.php?lang=en&page=news

Also have a look at this Microsoft KB Article:
"Home Page Setting Changes Unexpectedly, or You Cannot Change Your Home Page
Setting"
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q320159

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi Spider - This has been showing up a lot lately and seems to be caused by
some malware called CoolWebSearch. Do the following:

Download and run: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/cwshredder.zip to
remove the parasite

Then download and run:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/iegentabs.reg to restore your
tabs and remove any restrictions that the parasite has put in place.

However, this also indicates that you may have acquired some other malware
along the way. If you go to this page at Jim Eshelman's site, here:
http://aumha.org/a/noads.htm and wait a little bit (be patient), an analysis
of a number of possible parasites on your machine will be made to help you
identify and remove them. NOTE: You will need to disable Ad Blocking in Zone
Alarm 3.x, if present or any other Ad Blocking software which interferes
with Java Scripting for this scan to work. You should get a message between
the two lines of **** giving the results of the scan.

Get Ad-Aware 6.0, Build 181 or later, here:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/. Update and run this regularly
to get rid of most "spyware/hijackware" on your machine. If it has to fix
things, be sure to re-boot and rerun AdAware again and repeat this cycle
until you get a clean scan. The reason is that it may have to remove
things which are currently "in use" before it can then clean up others.

Another excellent program for this purpose is SpyBot Search and Destroy
available here: http://security.kolla.de/ SpyBot Support Forum here:
http://www.net-integration.net/cgi-bin/forums/ikonboard.cgi. I recommend
using both normally. After fixing things with SpyBot S&D, be sure to
re-boot and rerun SpyBot again and repeat this cycle until you get a clean
"no red" scan. The reason is that SpyBot sometimes has to remove things
which are currently "in use" before it can then clean up others.



Note that sometimes you need to make a judgement call about what these
programs report as spyware. See here, for example:
http://www.imilly.com/alexa.htm


--
Please respond in the same thread.
Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP



In