[Stryke 9]

Bah.

Bah, bah, bah, bah.


Some evil corporation has put a particularly irritating piece of adware on my machine that changes the homepage to some random corporate whore page (last time it was an anti-spyware software page, go figure), and I can't get it off. Can't even find it, which is annoying, as Ad-aware is supposed to have the best track record for this sort of thing, which I suppose means I'm just ****ed.


Anyway. Advice. It's really ****ing annoying, and until I find out who put the thing on here (which involves getting at it) I can't mutilate the perpetrator, so don't bother suggest it, I'm already working on that end of things.

[delta_7890]

If you can, look through your processes with the task manager.  Look through and see if there's anything that looks odd, fishy, out of place, etc, and try to delete it manually.  By that, I mean running a search for the thing and deleting it through there.  Most adware/spyware things run off of exes.

[Fineus]

Yeah, and have you installed anything lately? Try looking at the installer and see if there's some random little "we reserve the right to **** you in the ass" clause that you didn't see when you agreed to install it.

[Stryke 9]

Not that I know of. Don't see any processes that are outright malicious-looking, either (though it's anyone's guess what "hpotdd01" is- might be spyware, might be keeping my computer running).

I'm reasonably sure that I picked the thing up at HOTU, as this problem roughly coincides with a visit there after a long hiatus and they're absolutely clogged with horrible ads, but more specific than that I cannot get.

[Nico]

that happened to me too. Don't remember what kind of page it was, but I couldn't get rid of it. Then, one day, it just went away and I could set my own homepage again ( the button for that would be turned grey so couldn't use it ). Never understood, never even tried to, actually.

[Stryke 9]

Yeh. This is actually kinda handy in that it calls attention to my webpage; maybe now there's a chance in hell I'll update it with stuff that isn't made in ugly ugly Ray Dream.

Plus, this wouldn't have annoyed me so badly had I not been pissing myself off with Wasteland for hours before then. Friggin' rangers keep trying to drown themselves, and take a week at it to boot. When they're not stumbling into cacti, walls, and the Scorpitron, that is. Little electronic morons...

[IceFire]

Started using Netscape 7.1 because of these kinds of problems.

[karajorma]

You could try Spybot Search and Destroy. That has at least as good a reputation as Ad-Aware

[Nico]

Originally posted by IceFire
Started using Netscape 7.1 because of these kinds of problems.

That's indeed one of the reasons why I switched to Mozilla.
But I have to say: don't listen to geeks, Mozilla is far from being as good as they say, there's lots of crappy stuff with it ( what's with it merging frames, for exemple? and it doesn't like labels either, it seems - you know, when you put the mouse over a pic, and you get a small window with a description appearing over it. well, they won't appear with Mozilla. Just to name a couple things).
I have yet to find a good browser, myself ( IE is fine on the basics, but it has the MS syndrom, of course: after a while, it doesn't work well anymore ).

[01010]

Use Spybot S&D, Ad aware doesn't get everything and neither does spybot but use both combined and you get pretty much everything.

[Arc]

"hpotdd01" seems to be part of some sort of Hewlett Packard digital imaging s/w (probably C:\Program Files\Hewlett-Packard\Digital Imaging\bin\hpotdd01.exe).

Ad aware seem to release new definition files about as regularly as antivirus companies, have you got the lastest one?

Where does your homepage get hijacked to? Might be able to find out some more details about what you've got and how to remove it with that if the other spyware removal programs don't have any luck.

Hope it helps...

[Kosh]

Boot to safe mode, then look up the processes running there (and write them down). That will tell you what Windows runs normally. Now go to regular windows and start ending all the other processes one by one. See if that works.

[Sandwich]

As for running processes (although I doubt it's something actively running) feel free to haphazardly "End Process" (assuming Win2k/XP) anything you want - if it's a crucial process, it won't let you terminate it. Note, however, that explorer.exe is not a crucial process, and can be safely ended, although you'll make your taskbar disappear. To get it back again, CTRL-ALT-DEL, Task Manager, File -> New Task (Run)... and type in "explorer.exe".

ANYway.... it's more likely to be a service or run-on-startup registry key IMO.

Originally posted by Nico


That's indeed one of the reasons why I switched to Mozilla.
But I have to say: don't listen to geeks, Mozilla is far from being as good as they say, there's lots of crappy stuff with it ( what's with it merging frames, for exemple? and it doesn't like labels either, it seems - you know, when you put the mouse over a pic, and you get a small window with a description appearing over it. well, they won't appear with Mozilla. Just to name a couple things).

Merging frames? What do you mean?

As for the mouseover tooltips, trust me on this - Mozilla does support them. And as with many "standards"-related problems today, the problem can be laid squarely in IE and MS's laps. Here's the lowdown:

For images, most people specify the alt="..." attribute of the < img... > tag as the mouseover text. This behaviour is wrong. The alt="...." attribute is to specify what text should be displayed instead of the image if, for whatever reason, the image cannot be displayed. For example:

[q]
The image below has the alt="..." attribute set to "missing image one":


[/q]

What you should see above is an outline of the image (since I also specified a width and height), the little "broken image" icon, and the text "missing image one" inside. Internet Explorer tries to be "helpful" and also displays that text as the tooltip text when you hover over the image with the cursor.

But, as stated before, this behavior is wrong. There is a specific attribute to the img tag for specifying the mouseover text, and that is the title="..." attribute. Watch:

[q]
The image below has the title="..." attribute set to "missing image two":


[/q]

The (missing) image above should be displayed as a border with the "broken image" icon, and no text inside. The "missing image two" should only appear when you hover the mouse over the image.

Finally the third example:

[q]
The image below has the alt="..." attribute set to "alternate text for image 3" and the title="..." attribute set to "title for missing image three":


[/q]

Now we have both methods used, with different content for each. Both Mozilla AND IE correctly display the alt="..." text inside the image border and the title="..." text in the tooltip. But the problem is caused by IE's "extra help" in the first examlpe - webmasters became careless in writing HTML code, expecting the alt="..." attribute would generate the tooltip text, as it does in IE. Then they don't understand why it's "broken" in a browser that follows the rules.

[aldo_14]

For point of reference, standards are pretty much dictated by the browser, not any body.  Basically, what happens is that Ms of Netscape create some innovation to try and give them an advantage (in terms of what their browser supports), the other copies it and eventually it get incorporated into a standard.  i.e Javascript has multiple implementations - MS ones (Jscript i think), the original Netscape one and a 'unified' standard based on the both of them.

The reason Ms is lax in enforcing HTML rules (and XML, because HTML is really becoming a subset of it), is simply to make it more appealing to potential users.

[Sandwich]

Originally posted by aldo_14
For point of reference, standards are pretty much dictated by the browser, not any body.

http://www.w3.org/

[Kamikaze]

Good web designers will try to abide by w3c standards, the problem is that most websites are made by amateurs.

I do not agree with the notion that "The reason Ms is lax in enforcing HTML rules is simply to make it more appealing to potential users." There are many standards that, if implemented, will make webpages much more interesting. Good examples are SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), PNG (Portable Network Graphics), and CSS2. There are no benefits from lack of adherence that I'm aware of.

It's just that MS is intent on maintaining its stance of making up their own sucky standards and can't be bothered to actually update IE to keep up (because most users will use it whether it's good or not). Additionally MS is trying to introduce its own new standards for a graphics addition to hypertext, which is designed to replace Flash and/or SVG/SMIL.

[Fozzy]

you think you have it bad i have to stair at AOL homepage eversinse i installed AIM so i can chat to friends from college, i wish they would use MSN.....

does anyone know how to permently chanfe my home page to what i want, instead of what AIM wants me to look at.

[StratComm]

Unless you've got the evil greedy AIM, you can just reset your homepage to whatever you want.  I've never heard of that problem before.

As for identifying suspicious processes, googling them works pretty well.  It will usually turn up a description within 2 hits, and will definitely do so if the process is malicious.

EDIT: Speaking of which, has anyone tried running a search for "miserable failure" on Google lately?  If you haven't I suggest you try it out.

[Bobboau]

do a search for files that have been made/modified in the last (however long it's been doing this)

search for files containing text [url of site you are being direced to]

also check the registry

[Bobboau]

Originally posted by StratComm
Speaking of which, has anyone tried running a search for "miserable failure" on Google lately?  If you haven't I suggest you try it out.

let me guess.... Bush