Hi Chris - 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 or
here
http://216.180.252.218/~spywareinfo.com/downloads/tools/cwshredder.zip
(if your HOSTS file has been hijacked by this parasite as has also been
happending with the most recent versions of this parasite) 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
