IE captured by malicious program

[JerryG]

My friend is having a problem where his IE and AOL browser are
being directed to pages he doesn't want to go to. These pages
seem to be a network of directories. There is also a popup that
says he has spyware and offers to sell a program to get rid of
it. It seems that most of his "Favorite Links" work, but these
unwanted directory pages come up whenever he types any new address
in the address bar, or in some cases, when he clicks on various
links. Norton Anti-Virus will not install. It completes a pre-scan
and does not give an indication of a virus, but gives an error
message when the system is rebooted and will not install. It seems
that his active-x and java are already turned off, and his security
level has been set to high. Thank you very much if you can help.
- Jerry

 

[JAY-S]

I have an almost identical problem. One pop-up says that
I'm in trouble because I visited an illegal site. They
consistently add four IE shortcuts to my desktop. Also,
under TOOLS>OPTIONS drop-down, there are links to "party
poker" and "party poker.com". The homepage on one of my
accounts gets reset to "http://freednshost.info/". When I
backspace to change it I see a list of unwanted adult-
related homepages.

How do I get rid of this mess?

Thanks,
Jay

 

[oops!!]

Download, install and run (FIX) Cool Web Shredder:

http://www.zerosrealm.com/downloads/CWShredder.zip

Right click and Save as...

Zee

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP]

My friend is having a problem where his IE and AOL browser are
being directed to pages he doesn't want to go to. These pages
seem to be a network of directories. There is also a popup that
says he has spyware and offers to sell a program to get rid of
it. It seems that most of his "Favorite Links" work, but these
unwanted directory pages come up whenever he types any new address
in the address bar, or in some cases, when he clicks on various
links. Norton Anti-Virus will not install. It completes a pre-scan
and does not give an indication of a virus, but gives an error
message when the system is rebooted and will not install. It seems
that his active-x and java are already turned off, and his security
level has been set to high. Thank you very much if you can help.
- Jerry

First eliminate any scumware.
See
Dealing with Unwanted Malware, Parasites, Toolbars and Search Engines
http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/unwanted.htm

Note that AdAware and SpyBot S & D will each catch some things the other
won't. Also, each needs to be updated with the program's update function
before every use, even when just downloaded. There's also a lot more to do
than just those two programs. CWShredder is also available here:
http://www.kellys-korner-xp.com/regs_edits/cwshredder.zip
**Post your HijackThis log to
http://forums.spywareinfo.com/ or the Spyware forum at
http://forum.aumha.org/ for expert analysis, not here.**
Alternative download pages for Ad-Aware, Spybot, HijackThis and CWShredder
may be found on this page:
http://aumha.org/a/parasite.htm.
If trying everything at that site does not fix the problem please post back
in the same thread.

--
Frank Saunders, MS-MVP, IE/OE
Please respond in Newsgroup. Do not send email
http://www.fjsmjs.com
Protect your PC
http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/