Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Rictor on September 11, 2004, 09:01:33 pm
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right oh.
here's the deal.
I got bitten by something, which replaces my Internet Explorer start page everytime I close the browser. It also pops up a pop-up. The start page goes to some crap search page, with about:blank appearing as the page title in the IE bar. I ran Spybot twice, it got everything the first time around, and then once more to make sure my system is clean. But as you might guess, this didn't help.
The only way I can identify the spyware is by the URL it takes me to, which is a sub page of "4bf65.ilxt.info".
Strangely, Google turns up nothing, but Yahoo does: a few forums with people with the same problems. I checked them out, and they all involve long, drawn out procedures using HijackThis, posting log files for personal inspection and the newest version of AdAware.
I am keen to find a simpler solution. One of the search results pointed me to a small file (hosted on Major Geeks which leads me to believe its legit), which is supposed to, as far as I can tell, fix this problem. Downloaded, ran it a few times as per instruction...still there.
I'll do the HijackThis/AdAware thing if nothing else helps, but there ought to be something easier (note, easier to me is hunting the thing down in the registry and deleting the files/entries.).
So....any ideas?
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Well, whenever I get something seemingly hopeless to kill I just reinstall XP. You could also just switch browsers. Mozilla firefox is good.
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Use Firefox :p
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I already use Mozilla, but I also need IE for...other things.
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use Windows Explorer... just type the url in the folder path bar... suprisingly, it works, and is overly similar to IE...
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search your contents of all files for the URL, also search your registry, I've had stuff like this beofre, and if you can remove it you can render it inert
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Originally posted by Hippo
and is overly similar to IE...
Thats because it is IE.
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Hippo, IE is just an WinExplorer shell. Alot of spywere is built on this little fact.
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hijackthis will solve all your problems. It's fairly easy. IIRC it has a 'fix common problems' button built right in. I had to use it when c2.lop bit me way back when.
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Gotta hop on this too:
Ric, HijackThis, if you haven't played with it yet, can be very helpful in getting rid of those "hard to get rid of" spy applications by showing you everything currently running on your system and the paths thereto. Plan on doing some serious digging the in the registry, annihilatiing DLL's, etc. You can also instruct HiJackThis to ignore files that you know what are. It won't really 'clean' anything, but it makes investigating a little easier.
Btw, make sure you're offline when you work on this. One of the spywares I went to war with would connect to the internet every time I deleted certain files and blast down new copies to my machine.
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Get the most annoying, irritating firewall you can get. I've said this once and I'll say it again... and again... and again... :nervous:
You will never have to worry about spyware ever again.
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[color=66ff00]Maeglamor vs. spyware:
Day 1: Installed Linux
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