Address toolbar & Autosearch

[eschwinder]

I use the address toolbar in my Taskbar with Firefox as my default
browser. Because Firefox has built in search capabilities, I have
turned off searching from the address bar in two places:

1) IE -> Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> When searching: Do not search
from Address bar

2) IE -> Search Sidetab -> Customize -> Autosearch Settings -> When
searching: Do not search from Address bar

I have restarted my computer after making those changes, but whenever I
type a search string into the Address toolbar (or the IE address bar),
I am automatically redirected to:

http://auto.search.msn.com/res ponse.asp?MT=[search string]

In IE, that gives me a "Cannot find server or DNS Error" page, but in
Firefox, it gives me a page that reads "Object moved to here."

In either case, something in Win2K, IE6, or the combination of the two
is re-writing my search string with an outdated msn search URL. I have
scoured the registry for anything that looks like
"auto.search.msn.com," and have removed the value from this registry
key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl

Does anyone have any ideas on where that MSN URL is coming from so that
I can kill it?

 

[Rob Parsons]

Check you Interenet Options to see if Autocomplete for WebAddresses is
enabled.. The sympton for this will be that the search string that you type
into the Address Bar will be change to something like
search%20mysearchstring.com . There is another possibility.... that is a
setting to do the 404 Error search (404 errors = page not found) . I could
not find the option for this in the Internet Options control panel... mmm!
So if you know how to edit your registry you will find the key under the
Main section of IE's settings in the HKCU root.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Do404Search

Change this value to 0 i/o 1

 

[Rob Parsons]

1 more thing.... I just checked my own machine....seems I have been hijacked
also..

Under the following key

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\URLSearchHooks

you will find a value (for a COM CLSID)

it should be
{CFBFAE00-17A6-11D0-99CB-00C04FD64497}

I have
{855F3B16-6D32-4fe6-8A56-BBB695989046}
which points to the ICQ/Google toolbar that I have installed

You will have to firstly disable third party Browser Helpers - Internet
Options / Advanced Tab to stop them re-writing the value each time you start
IE.
Then check your registry for the correct value.

Check you Interenet Options to see if Autocomplete for WebAddresses is
enabled.. The sympton for this will be that the search string that you type
into the Address Bar will be change to something like
search%20mysearchstring.com . There is another possibility.... that is a
setting to do the 404 Error search (404 errors = page not found) . I could
not find the option for this in the Internet Options control panel... mmm!
So if you know how to edit your registry you will find the key under the
Main section of IE's settings in the HKCU root.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Do404Search

Change this value to 0 i/o 1

I use the address toolbar in my Taskbar with Firefox as my default
browser. Because Firefox has built in search capabilities, I have
turned off searching from the address bar in two places:

1) IE -> Tools -> Options -> Advanced -> When searching: Do not search
from Address bar

2) IE -> Search Sidetab -> Customize -> Autosearch Settings -> When
searching: Do not search from Address bar

I have restarted my computer after making those changes, but whenever I
type a search string into the Address toolbar (or the IE address bar),
I am automatically redirected to:

http://auto.search.msn.com/res ponse.asp?MT=[search string]

In IE, that gives me a "Cannot find server or DNS Error" page, but in
Firefox, it gives me a page that reads "Object moved to here."

In either case, something in Win2K, IE6, or the combination of the two
is re-writing my search string with an outdated msn search URL. I have
scoured the registry for anything that looks like
"auto.search.msn.com," and have removed the value from this registry
key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl

Does anyone have any ideas on where that MSN URL is coming from so that
I can kill it?

 

[Eric J Schwinder]

Thanks for the suggestions... I had already made sure to disable
autocomplete, and on your advice, changed the "Do404Search" value to 0.
I also checked the URLSearchHooks CLSID and made sure it matched what
you said it should be...

Unfortunately, the problem still persists. I've also noticed that
another Internet Option that I've set (I unchecked the box for "Reuse
window for launching shortcuts") doesn't seem to have any effect
either. Could there be something on this machine that's overriding all
of my Internet Options settings?

 

[Rob Parsons]

The only other thing are BHO's that overwriting the URLSearchHook CLSID each
time you start IE. On my machine, diabling 3 rd party BHO's (Advance tab,
Internet Options) and then restarting IE worked...

Note also that this fixed the Address Bar in IE. The Address Bar on your
taskbar may require you to either unload and then reload the toolband or
even rebooting...
Seems logical to me since it retains the search hook code in memory.

Also check that there is only one entry for the urlsearchhook. I have seen
more than one... IE seems to only use the first in the stack.