IE Question

[earthling30]

Has anyone ever had a problem where Internet Explorer just launches by it self and go to a random site? If so, what did you do to fix it? My uncle has this problem with his Win XP-Pro rig. Thanks in advance!

 

[AFB]

Run Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware

 

[Injury]

Originally posted by: amdfanboy
Run Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware

Yes. You are most likely infected with a piece of adware and it is launching advertisements.
amdfanboy's solution should take care of it with ease. If it doesn't, the spyware FAQ should point you in the right direction.

 

[Schadenfroh]

see sig

 

[earthling30]

Sorry for the short post earlier, I was short on time.
I've done the following:
I googled it but found nothing.
Ran Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy
Ran CWShredder
Ran HiJack This
I looked for anything that is running in the task manager and msconfig that was out of the ordinary.
No success. When you leave the pc for a while and come back to it IE will be running, sometimes multiple windows will be open. I think that it might be a hidden file that not allowing it to reinstall itself.

 

[OZEE]

Post your HJT log. DON"T MAKE ANY CHANGES WITH IT UNLESS INSTRUCTED!

 

[Schadenfroh]

yeh, close all windows but Hijackthis and press scan, then post the results in the thread in my sig. dont check anything or remove anything untill someone has looked at it. Make sure that the programs you used to scan with are updated

 

[dfi]

Don't forget to run a virus scan. Also, try posting the contents of the process list in task manager. Some ad/spyware will also persistently re-check themselves in msconfig. Try disabling everything in msconfig. In addition, make sure the messenger service (not related to MSN) is turned off under control panel-> administrative tools-> services.

dfi

 

[earthling30]

Well I ran a virus scan @ 3:30 AM this morning, 157 viruses were found by housecall, they've been using a P2P program called WinMX, go figure. Something has prevented his current virus scanner from working which I've seen done before. The task manager has been destroyed by something. When you open it doesn't have any tabs listed or menus. Ran Spybot and it found over 100 problems after I cleaned out the Add or remove programs screen. He told me that he didn't have anything to loose so I went ahead and reloaded windows which would be much quicker IMO plus to have another fresh start. I'm going to try to convince him to try out FireFox, Mozilla, or something else other than IE and to stay away from those P2P programs. Thanks for all your replies.

 

[Smilin]

Probably a good call on that reload.

 

[Schadenfroh]

holy moly, good thing you formatted, that thing was really messed up, tell him to use the free version of AVG and keep it updated.

 

[earthling30]

Originally posted by: Smilin
Probably a good call on that reload.

I thought the same thing.

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
holy moly, good thing you formatted, that thing was really messed up, tell him to use the free version of AVG and keep it updated.

Agreed, it started acting very funny after removing them. Is AVG any good? Does it update itself?

 

[OZEE]

Yes AVG is great and it can be set to update itself. And it's free!