How Do I get rid of a search engine as my Home Page

[Scott]

A search engine becomes my home page every time I turn my
computer on. I set it to msn and then after rebooting, my
home page is set to this search engine called
http://www.searchdot.net/. I never downloaded this search
engine but somehow it has got control of my browser.
Thanks.

 

[seth]

Hi,

I have the same problem but my search page is http://globe-
finder.net/344012/. I have all the symptoms you have.
Please contact me if you find out anything. Thanks.

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi Scott - 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.

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.


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

 

[Jim Byrd]

Hi Seth - 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.

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.


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