HELP! Uninvited program has invaded my PC!!

[WJB05]

Approximately 20 minutes ago I was logged on to Ebay and switched to our Home Page (MSN) and something totally scary happened. . . A totally unknown to me search page came up with a window in the center titled "Global Dialer". The window listed our modem and had the statement, "International Rates Apply", also the program had installed into the Task Tray with a shortcut on our desktop. I attempted to uninstall using the Windows uninstall utility and received the message that uninstall would be complete upon reboot. I rebooted and it had not uninstalled. I then tried to uninstall with Norton and while some files were removed, the file tonex00052.exe could not be removed because I did not have the correct rights! Has anyone had this experience? How can I completely remove the program? Thanks for any assistance. Correction: the file I cannot uninstall is 425103686.exe, tonex00052 is the name of the shortcut.

 

[EeyoreX]

Try deleting the files in safe mode. Also see if Ad-Aware and/or SpyBot - Search and Destroy can get rid of it (and/or any other spyware you might have). I'd try safe mode first, but the two programs listed are also generally good things to run anyhow.

\Dan

 

[fredtam]

Adaware and Spybot won't work download cwshredder.


Edit: Link fixed.

 

[ProviaFan]

After you run the Ad-aware or another spyware killer, stop visiting porn sites so you won't get any more of those.

 

[WJB05]

Thanks for the replies. I had managed to remove the .exe files with Windows-Explorer after posting this message and ran Norton WinDoctor and corrected some registry entries. I downloaded and ran cwshredder, it corrected two registry entries. It is apparent that we should regularly run some spyware; which is considered the best? Thanks again for the help.

 

[fredtam]

Spybot or adawre are the two I would reccomend for general scanning but for hijacks I always use cwshredder. The oher two usually won't catch all the hijack files like CW.
Since they don't take up much space and don't interfere (adaware will pick up some of spybots files and reccomend deletion so watch for it.with each other I would keep all three around.