<font color=deepskyblue>My regular PC is in the shop undergoing a serious upgrade, so I hooked up my boys PC and I've been using it during the interim. Within 2 days of hooking it up, I was infected with an internet hijacker [img]graemlins/madhell.gif[/img]

It keeps changing my homepage to "about.blank" or "Second Thought" or a page warning that my PC may be infected with spyware. :eek:

I've run <font color=yellow>Ad-Aware</font>, <font color=lime>Spybot</font> and <font color=red>Hijack This</font> and deleted the infections they detected, but it seems like the hijacker is still in my system somewhere.

Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.</font>

<font color=skyblue>Its the registry keys that will have to be found and removed. For some reason, when all the above remover aids are run, sometimes they still leave behind a file that is named differently than those associated with the files removed successfully. </font>

<font color=skyblue>Google Searches

about.blank query
http://www.dbforums.com/t705228.html

http://www.securiteam.com/windowsntf...MP0I15AUW.html


2nd thought

Home Page

"In order for us to keep this software free we will open advertisements while you surf the web that we feel will broaden your surfing experience." -- http://www.2nd-thought.com/terms.html

Removal tips by Pest Patrol

http://www.pestpatrol.com/PestInfo/o...nd-thought.asp </font>

Edit: Odd...I cannot get this last link to work, but I sent you an e-mail that has the entire page copied for you to see if you cannot get it to pull up either. It sounds like they have your solution.

[ 06-02-2004, 10:44 PM: Message edited by: Larry_OHF ]

<font color=deepskyblue>Thanks Larry. I really appreciate the help.

I get very little PC time under normal circumstances and it REALLY hacks me off when I have to spend a big portion of that limited time removing trash that shouldn't be there in the first place. [img]graemlins/madhell.gif[/img] </font>

What is with all these spyware things going on??
I was at a friends place in Edmonton. And I was up last night because I could not sleep. He had the same thing stormy had so I started to work on it with him the next morning and it seemed like as soon as we got ride of one. Something else would pop up. We ran out of time to finish all the work. But more to the point why on earth does this need to happen?? :mad:

[ 06-03-2004, 01:24 AM: Message edited by: Mack_Attack ]

Companies(scammers) are convinced that if they pester you enough you'll actually buy into whatever garbage they are trying to push on you. Personally I think spyware/adaware should be traced back to the parent company and have them fined for insane amounts of money for the mass disruption of internet traffic everywhere.

Second though is quite irritating. I posted a thread about it earlier. Alot of good advice from various members there [img]smile.gif[/img]

Geez, I hope you can clean the pc up, Cerek! What a pain!

Don't forget to update the definitions in Ad-aware before running it. Also go into add/remove programs and try to uninstall as much as possible. You will probably have to manually reset your home page through internet options before restarting.

I had the same thing, and Spy Sweeper removed it for me.