XP/Internet Explorer virus?

[Rgee]

Hi, I may have had a virus attack this week. Now every time I click on the IE icon it does not auto dial up and a blank page pops up. Checking the IE6 properties the home page is set to 'about:blank' but everytime I set it back to yahoo and launch it it goes back to 'about:blank'. I can log onto the Internet by launching the dial up manually. I've used Ad-aware and it keeps finding 3 data miners pointing to registry settings for the homepage.

Any ideas?

RGee

[doddze]

sounds familiar did you get sorted?

[Jinx]

Its not a virus - its adware/spyware. You need to get hold of spyblaster, spybot, adaware and the latest version of AVG antivirus to get rid of the thing (or have a better understanding of registry keys than I do).

[TheExcession]

I've had a neighbour complaining of a similar problem.

IE loses it link to the dial-up settings, this is on Win98

Spent a while locating the correct dial-up settings (haven't used 98 for about 6 years now), recreated the link and everything looked hunky dory, even rebooted the machine to check that IE would automatically dial next time round only to get a call the next day saying IE won't dial anymore.

Think I'll pop along with a CD full of the above spyware/adaware stuff and give their PC a clean out - oh and give them Firefox too.

best
Ex

[malman]

sounds very like coolweb search. Get cwshredder and "hijack this" and adaware and..... you've seen these threads before

but cwshredder is the best to start with if you get coolweb.

install firefox and use unless you must use IE for a particular site.

edit to add be careful with hijack this! as its a manual removal tool unlike adaware etc so you need to know what you're removing before you do it


>> Edited by malman on Friday 24th December 22:19

[anonymous-user]

I've got that about:blank on one of my other PC's. I have deleted everything using Hijack this and it still doesn't appear to have worked.

Will be formatting the drive soon anyway so i'll sort it out then.

[simpo two]

If the usual anti-spyware stuff doesn't shift it... I got rid of one once using System Restore. However, an IT friend of mine had to talk me through it, and it depends on when your last Restore point is.