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marc777

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Good idea for a new forum - keeps the IT quesions in one place. So here's one for you.

Anyone know why my home page refuses to save in Internet Explorer and each time I fire it up I get "about:blank", with the page displaying an index of website I might care to visit search. Clearly I have got some sort of virus but don't know how to get rid of it.

Running a an HP Pentium 4 with windows XP and up to date Mcaphee virus protection and firewall.

Marc
 
marc777 said:
Good idea for a new forum - keeps the IT quesions in one place. So here's one for you.

Anyone know why my home page refuses to save in Internet Explorer and each time I fire it up I get "about:blank", with the page displaying an index of website I might care to visit search. Clearly I have got some sort of virus but don't know how to get rid of it.

Running a an HP Pentium 4 with windows XP and up to date Mcaphee virus protection and firewall.

Marc

It could be some spyware you've got - does do funny things to your browsing experience. Try downloading something like Spybot Search and Destroy or Adaware(not both, they don't like each other) and see what that picks up.

I had a similar experience to you, did the Spybot one and it's all sorted now :D
 
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Hi,

I didnt know i had a problem untill i read this. I downloaded spybot, this finds errors and i delete them, but if i do the search again 10 mins later, finds more! So removed spybot and tried adaware - same thing??

Jay
 
I have, at last, had the time to run spybot. It seesm to work, although didn't realise that you need to re-boot.

Also ran this, and I think this was more effective as I found it on a google search relating specifically to the homepage being hijacked.

http://www.computercops.biz/zx/phoenix22/cws.zip

Run this program, CWshredder and re-boot.

Seems to have worked for me.

On spybot, remember that there is a "immunize" option to stop getting similar problem next time.

Marc
 
This is my 4p worth.

Apologies if this teaches you to suck eggs but others may find it useful.

AV software and a Firewall will not necessarily protect you from all malware on the Internet.

A decent FW on your PC will filter (block) inbound requests to your box from the net it will also filter traffic being sent from your box. This filtering should be configurable and will stop a large portion of malcious probes/attacks against your box.

However most cheaper FW solutions can't stop malware disguised as HTTP (port 80) traffic. HTTP is the language (protocol) of the WWW and is the traffic that lets you browse this forum for example.

You said you've used ADaware which will find lots of 'nasties' that download as cookies which come across port 80 straight through the FW!

Firewalls are often seen as the answer to lots of security weaknesses. :(
But you have to understand their failings to get the most out of them.

AV Software yes is a good thing and should be kept up to date. Getting updates at least daily is no longer an over kill. However AV vendors from year dot have played the numbers game, some include protection against other types of malware in addition to viruses, some AV vendors struggle to do this. Yes McAfee is a good product but like FWs AV software is not perfect.

The speed at which an infection can spread is increasing hence there is a lag time between a piece of malware being released and the time that the AV vendors offer protection. This isn't helped by 'always on' broadband connections. In the world of IT Security there are several disaster scenarios based on the rapid infection of the net. :eek:

As you've seen you can clean up these pests but AV & FWs alone are not the answer. Make sure your box is up to date with all the security patches from Microsoft. MS have recently released a CD containing a large number of security fixes this may save the several hours of download over a dialup cnx. It is available FOC so check out the following link:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/protect/cd/order.asp

If you are brave you could visit the MS Update site (you can get there via the IE Tools menu) but be warned if you're not experienced (especially on XP) this may screw your system over so always create a restore point.

Opps better put the Merc away in the garage. It's late :eek:
 

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