Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners OT-MY PC IS SICK

i'll see what happens as administrator.
again
thanks

I had this happen to me last week. I don't know if it is a feature of Windows NT, but I run XP and it has a system restore feature that took care of this for me. Good Luck.
Mike

Bazooka is a shareware app that will determine the instances of spyware/adware. It will then take you to their site and explain how to remove/cleanse the system.

Be forewarned that you will need to edit the registery. Some of the more commercial apps will do this for you, but I have found that they can miss critical keys.

NT doesn't have the nice system restore feature. Symantec's Ghost will do the job. It only take a few minutes to have your system back to normal.

Apple "security thru obscurity"

sorry couldnt resist

ANYWAY

I prefer AdAware to Spybot myself, althought both usually work fine.

Now you stated problem with AdAware not deleting, it does in fact delete, the quarenteen is jsut a backup if you find it took something out you need. Now I work on PCs for a living and I've seen some nasty's that make ya work real hard to get rid of. Be sure you have clicked the option in AdAware to update before ya bother scanning, they update the ref file frequently which makes a big difference. Also if there is a file in use AdAware can't remove it SHOULD prompt you to ahev it run on next reboot, so it can rescan before the system reloads everything. Finnaly at the end of a scan be sure to right click an opbject and select all before moving on the the removal step, if those objects it finds don't get a checkmark in em, AdAware won't remove em for ya.

ran your suggested spybot destroyer as current user. it did identify dialers etc, created a back-up, and fixed them. i also ran the tracking part of the software to see if that would help too. re-started IE 6.0 and had the same "about blank" search page. tomorrow AM, i'll run the program again as administrator. i'll keep you posted.
thanx
dan

Will your browser let you put in your own homepage?
Tools, internet options then home page. Or is this the whole problem?

Tom

P.S. I also work on PC's and servers for a living. I'm mainly a unix guy, However my job requires Windows, network and security administration. It's a thankless career.

I had the same problem with my WinXP system, the cure is to have AdAware ignore the problem, not delete it as described here.

Long list of useful stuff I just stumbled upon. You might want to check some of them out.
I use Spybot myself and I'm happy with it.

yes, the problem is my homepage is overridden to a search page. as soon as the search page appears, a pop up tells me i have spyware; what a coincidence(sp). logged in as admin, i have no problems, but as a user i do. many of my apps run as a user but not as admin. do i want to become use 04 instead of 03?
bren, i will look further into your suggestions, but i fear too many of these programs might cancel out each other. am i wrong about that?
sigh, ready to use a hammer and then ship the pieces to my it guy
dan