Outlook displaying ad when clicking on any link in email

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tony Baker
  • Start date Start date
T

Tony Baker

Hi, When I display a message in Outlook which has a hyperlink in it
and when I click the link, an ad for "The ultimate guide to hidden web
bargains" pops up, regardless of whatever link I click on, or what
email I'm looking at.
Very annoying.
a) How can I fix this behaviour?
b) Any way of preventing it in the future?
I don't remember installing any crappy software, mystery as to how it
happened (perhaps someone else was playing on my computer...)
Many thanks for any help,
Tony.
 
what is the link you are clicking on?
first update your AV and scan your drive. Secondly, this sounds like a
Spyware issue. If you have Outlook 2003, set all incoming email to be read
in text only, that will solve one issue. Next, make sure that your AV scans
all incoming email.

Get Spybot Search and Destroy and run it.
http://www.safer-networking.org

It will get rid of any bots or scumware you may have.

Lastly, dont click on any links, email or anything that you did not expect,
even if it's from someone that you knoew.

marx404
 
Tony,
You've been hijacked. Not quite as bad as a full fledged virus, but your
computer needs to be cleaned, just the same. You need a program like Ad
Aware or something similar, designed to remove scumware and tracking files
you pick up while surfing the net. There are many good programs available.
Ad Aware is available from Lavasoft here: http://lavasoft.element5.com/

Hope this works. Please post back either way.
Good Luck
 
Hi, thanks for your replies. The first thing I thought of was adware,
I run spybot on my system and I have just tried Ad-aware (latest
updates), neither of them fixed it. I have also run a virus scan
(latest updates) which found nothing.

So in any email in outlook which has a link in it, when I click the
link it still brings up the stupid ad for "The ultimate guide to
hidden web bargains".

One other thing, I have two accounts in Outlook, my hotmail and a pop
account. When I click on the inbox of my hotmail account I get the
error:
"The web page could not be found. This error could have been caused by
a bad or misspelled URL; following an invalid link; or your network
connection and/or transient conditions on the Internet. To check the
URL, choose the Home Page tab on the Properties dialog. Can't find
this file. Make sure the path and file name are correct."
If I right click my hotmail inbox and select properties, then go to
the Home page tab everything is greyed out. and I can't change the
Address which is:
"C:\DOCUME~1\Tony\LOCALS~1\Temp\olfB50.tmp.html"
I also can't find that in the registry and when I browse to that
folder I can see that html file. This is the contents of it:
<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Hotmail</TITLE></HEAD><FRAMESET COLS="150,*"
FRAMEBORDER=0 FRAMESPACING=0><FRAME
SRC="http://officeupdate.microsoft.com/office/redirect/10/OutlookHotmailPane.asp?DPC={6E8DD200-AB04-11D1-B5B8-006097C998E7}&DCC={CC29E96F-7BC2-11D1-A921-00A0C91E2AA2}&AppName=Outlook&HelpLCID=2057&WebLocale=1033"
NAME="ADS"></FRAME><FRAME
SRC="C:/DOCUME~1/Tony/LOCALS~1/Temp/olrB50.tmp.html" NAME="MAIN"
MARGINWIDTH=0 MARGINHEIGHT=0 SCROLLING=NO></FRAME></FRAMESET></HTML>
which is the preview pane of hotmail.

I'm wondering if there is some "preference" or setting in outlook
which says what program to use when clicking on a link and if what I
have discussed above has something to do with my troubles?

Any more ideas?

Cheers,

Tony.
 
I managed to solve the problem, check out this forum:
http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/t1074641871

Basically I had to change my URL file type, here is what it says in the forum:
__________________________________

Go to control panel, folder options, file types tab

Scroll down to the URL:Hypertext Transfer Protocols, click advanced, click edit
and make sure the following is in the application used to perform action box:

"C:\PROGRAM FILES\INTERNET EXPLORER\iexplore.exe" -nohome

The same applies for URL:Gopher

DDE should be set to: "%1",,-1,0,,,,
Application should say: IExplore
DDE application not running should be blank
Topic should be: WWW_OpenURL

Run each line individually.
Start – Run then type
regsvr32 Urlmon.dll
regsvr32 Shdocvw.dll
regsvr32 Shell32.dll
regsvr32 Oleaut32.dll
regsvr32 Actxprxy.dll
regsvr32 Mshtml.dll
If this does not work try System File Checker
Start – Run then type
sfc /scannow (note the space) have your XP CD handy this time as you may
be prompted for it.
 
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