OT: about:blank homepage hijacker..

[David E. Gervais]

Hello, people

I got hit again by the 'IMPOSSIBLE' to remove hompage hijacker that set my home page to about:blank. But after all attempts to remove it, I thought of a simple solution..

I went to may Favorites folder and created a shortcut (sent to desktop) of the link I want to be and normally is my homepage. (the shrapnel forums login page.)

I then deleted the quick-launch icon for IE and replaced it with the shortcut to the shrapnel forums login page.

What is the diff? well, IE only uses the 'homepage' when no paramiters are given to it when launched. (the default settings) and therefore the about:blank keeps replacing any homepage I set. By telling IE where to go when it is alunched, I no longer goto (or use) the 'homepage option' so for all intensive purposes the about:blank hijacker no longer gets launched and is bypassed alltogeather.

Just thought I'd share this genius solution with any of you that have run into this nasty highjacker.

Cheers!

FYI: running Spybot Search & Destroy, AdAware and HijackThis, dit not succede in removing the about:blank hijacker. even booting in safe mode and deleting 'suspect' .exe's listed in the hijack log file did not fix the problem. Since the only bad thing about this hijacker seems to be the outright theft of your homepage and pointing it to ads for downloading spyware removal programs. I think it's all a conspiracy of these 'removal' program companies to scare you into purchasing their product. I find it very strange that a 'removal' program can detect the hijacker, but is not able to remove it. If you can't remove it, then what is the use of telling me I have it?

[/babble mode off]

[ July 04, 2004, 16:17: Message edited by: David E. Gervais ]

[Katchoo]

Or better yet, don't use Internet Explorer.



Grab youself a copy of Mozilla, David, before IE causes your computer to catch on fire and burn your house down.

And if you don't believe that, just wait! With all the problems and holes IE has, it's just a matter of time before some hacker can turn IE into a modern day 'Philadelphia Experiment'.

[Raging Deadstar]

Originally posted by Katchoo:
Or better yet, don't use Internet Explorer.



Grab youself a copy of Mozilla, David, before IE causes your computer to catch on fire and burn your house down.

And if you don't believe that, just wait! With all the problems and holes IE has, it's just a matter of time before some hacker can turn IE into a modern day 'Philadelphia Experiment'.

I second this! But an interesting way to bypass that problem David

[David E. Gervais]

Mozilla downloaded, installed, and now running. Looks good so far. Thanks for the suggestion.

But for you IE diehard fanatic followers that refuse to change Loyalties, my solution/bypass seemed to be working fine.

Cheers!

[Captain Kwok]

Try using system restore if you have it.

[psimancer]

an easier way is to go into the system registry ad change the home page value and the home page backup value if you have the actual webpage name you can search your registry for that site name then just delete those keys this wont cause any undue problems for ie

another thing is to check the downloaded program files directory many of these programs set in java applets that automatically reset the home and search pages just click the properties and see what dependencies they have usually a file on the website is listed if so just delete the applet