Annoying IE main page takeover

[HomeBound]

I like to use about:blank as my default when opening Internet Explorer.
I've never had a problem for years.

All of a sudden Hot-Searches (a dead link BTW) Keeps becoming the default home page, without me picking it.

I have a firewall, and ad-aware. Ad-watch picks it up as an attempt to change registry files, whenever I try to revert back to about:blank

Any suggestions on how to get rid of this taking over of my home page?

 

[Morrog]

1) Stop visiting bad sites. 2) Manually remove and spyware/adware on your computer. 3) Get Mozilla Firefox

3 Easy steps to victory!

 

[Andre3000]

I have great success with ZoneAlarm as a firewall. You can make it so that it asks you if you want to access a site before actually accessing it. This prevents accidentally clicking on ads that download **** onto your computer or accidentally clicking "Yes" when asking you to download or install something.

ZoneAlarm also alerts you when someone has tried to access your computer and has been denied. If someone gets through that is not supposed to get through, ZoneAlarm automatically shuts down all internet activity and quarentines the user's files. It's really a great system in my opinion.

 

[Alenci]

Try looking for that site in your registry. I am not sure if most spyware and adware removal programs clean up the registry or not, but you will need to remove that. Go to Run and type "regedit." I'm not sure where it would be found, but search on the internet for where IE's start up page is in the registry and you should be able to find it. Good luck!

 

[Tihana]

I'm not sure, but the program HijackThis might help. Since I haven't had this problem myself, I haven't tested yet, but I think I read somewhere about that program. If not, maybe you could try to do a search for "remove Hot-Searches" or something, and see if some useful information come up. Also - IE easily gets "infected" with all sorts of stupid things like this, so it might be a good idea to have a second browser installed, too. (Mozilla is my favorite, but the new Opera (version 7.50) is getting a lot of good reviews lately, too).

 

[marduke]

had the problem on my mums computer (which my brother and sister use) and tried to fix it through the registry but only managed to stop it temporarily, as soon as i rebooted it came back... so i just formatted and started again... lol simple

 

[Cozmo]

Use either HiJackThis, CWShredder or SpyBot.

 

[HomeBound]

I have just recently been introduced to Hijack this, and just posted my problem with them.

That seems to be a great website.

Thanks

 

[Formerly Known As Andre]

Yes, Spybot is also good.

Once again i will repost the post of mine that was deleted. Go check out ZoneAlarm. I find it specTACular.

 

[marduke]

get mozilla firefox, i just got it the other day, and im amazed at how good it is. very similar to IE but without the problems.. lol

 

[Hozer]

Side Note: Firefox may look great at the beginning but it runs differently then IE and requires you to install all the plugins that have already been install in IE.

Though it is still a great browser, I highly recommend it.

Hozer

 

[marduke]

the only plugin i have had to install is flash player..

 

[flicka]

If you haven't already done so try this site:

http://forums.spywareinfo.com

I had the same problem 2 days ago but a combo of adaware, spybot s&d, cwshredder and a dll fix someone on that site walked me thru solved my problem. Also, if your are running XP make sure you install all the critical updates since one of them addressed the issue and helps prevent it from happening in the first place.

 

[strasburg_valley]

I second Cozmo, those are 3 programs that will solve/help solve ALOT of problems.