having a wierd spyware problem.

[HybridSquirrel]

everytime i hit enter in windows it seems to bring up a www.ask.com window in firefox. and i havent figured it out i scanned multiple times with spybot and adaware but it says there is nothing wrong and when i scan with avg i get

hosts read error
shell32.dll change


anyone have any idea or can help me out. id greatly appreciate it. reformatting isnt high on my list. this is on windows xp sp2 and all of the updates.

 

[NoelS]

HybridSquirrel,

Sounds like it's entrenched in Firefox. One thought would be to uninstall Firefox and then re-install it, see if that works. Quick to do and might solve the problem. BTW, before you uninstall, have a new copy of the Firefox install program already downloaded, ready to install...

Another thought - go to your Registry Editor and search for ask.com, then delete each instance.

Noel

 

[Tempered81]

sounds like the ask.com toolbar got installed. you're scripted to find ask.com upon startup and it's probably become your homepage. try firefox reinstall, and removing ask/etc from the OS.