Quick Question

[el Chi]

My browser's suddenly and for no reason I can see changed its home page from blueyonder to http://search-town.net/
I tried the obvious and changed it back in Internet Options, but when I turned it back on, the home page had gone back to the searchtown gubbins. Any thoughts on how to rectify this rather irritating situation?

 

[Dedalus]

run adaware or search through your registry to remove it.

 

[el Chi]

Which registry?

 

[eraser]

My browser's suddenly and for no reason I can see changed its home page from blueyonder to http://search-town.net/
I tried the obvious and changed it back in Internet Options, but when I turned it back on, the home page had gone back to the searchtown gubbins. Any thoughts on how to rectify this rather irritating situation?

It could be spyware or adware. Go to http://www.safer-networking.org/ and download Spybot. Then go to http://www.lavasoft.de/ and download Ad-Aware. Update both programs, then run a scan on your PC with each one. Your problem should be fixed.

 

[ray_MAN]

Check everything. This happened to me and my Dad. Do it before it spreads. I did and I got away clean, bu my dad ended up getting a virus!

 

[Dedalus]

->start
->run
->"regedit"
->HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
->SOFTWARE
->Microsoft
->Internet Explorer
->Main (just click on the actual file don't open the little menu thing)

now look in the pane to the right and look for something related to 'Search-town.net' or whatever. if you spot that url in there just kill it. 9 times out of 10 it comes straight back after a reboot so it's best to run adaware afterwards to be sure. i haven't been able to completely remove these sorts of things, i'm sure someone else knows how to.

 

[el Chi]

Sorry to resurrect this thread but: Isn't forcibly changing someone's homepage to something they don't want and then making it nigh-on impossible to fix, extremely illegal? Infringement of private property? Bastards.

 

[Shuzer]

Sorry to resurrect this thread but: Isn't forcibly changing someone's homepage to something they don't want and then making it nigh-on impossible to fix, extremely illegal? Infringement of private property? Bastards.

That's the beauty of spyware, you almost ALWAYS accept it willingly, whether it popped up at a site and you accidentally clicked OK, or it was included in something like DivX.. you agree to 99% of it (by accident)

 

[Mr-Fusion]

Try bazooka spyware scanner.

 

[el Chi]

That's the beauty of spyware, you almost ALWAYS accept it willingly, whether it popped up at a site and you accidentally clicked OK, or it was included in something like DivX.. you agree to 99% of it (by accident)

Yeah but it never says "By the way, this will almost irreparably change your home-page/invade your privacy by monitoring your internet activity (unbeknownst to you at that)" so couldn't that be classed as deception/non-disclosure (is that the correct term?) or something similar? What they're doing is unfair intensely irritating and invasive.

 

[ComradeBadger]

Moved to Hardware, Software & Troubleshooting

Yeah, and EULAs, read 'em, they contain all sorts of things, new Raven Shield Patch anyone?

Try Housecall and Ad-aware

 

[el Chi]

Sorry Comrade...
By the way, cheers Mr-Fusion, bazooka might have located the problem, or at least a similar one: summat about CoolWebSearch? I'm downloading a program Bazooka suggested called CWShredder - whilst I pretty much trust this I was just hoping someone could confirm that it's Kool and the Gang?

 

[ComradeBadger]

A small utility for removing CoolWebSearch (aka CoolWwwSearch, YouFindAll, White-Pages.ws and a dozen other names). Spybot S&D tends to forget essential parts of the hijack, so until it updates, you can just this to completely remove the hijack. Updated to remove the new variants once they come out.

Yep, it's a good idea, and should fix your problem, which seems to be common

 

[el Chi]

Huzzah! Cheers mate.

 

[Ti133700N]

If you are familiar with the registry your can remove alot of unwanted stuff. I don't recommand browsing with IE since it's not very secure and alot of Web pages are know to change your startup page or the search page automatically. You can remove the installed toolbars by deleting the keys in Microsoft Internet Explorer/Toolbar. Also, you can do a search in the entire registry with the URL of the newly installed startup page to find other keys in the registry that have changed. I don't have this problem anymore, I switched to Linux