Someone please tell me how spyware comes back after I remove it

[vapidtransit]

I built my own rig and I keep it clean of spyware. This is not a troubleshooting question.

my dad's computer is another story. I just spent 5 hours cleaning spyware off his computer and yet there are still programs that come back after I think I've deleted their every registry key, every folder, every cookie, every .dll.

I don't understand how this happens. Someone please satisfy my curiousity with an explanation.

 

[berkut7]

get him off IE

 

[DrPizza]

get him off IE, use Hijack This in addition to the adaware and spybot that I assume you're using. There are a couple of spyware products that are getting incredibly difficult to get rid of - miss one component and it reinstalls all the other components immediately as soon as it's connected to the internet.
Also, be careful with deleting the DLL's.. a couple of spyware programs alter the Winsock so that if you simply delete their .dll files.. you're screwed.


Been there, done that, with relative's computers.


Also, this thread is in the wrong forum... read the sticky at the top of this forum.

 

[blahblah99]

Stop visiting porn sites.

You have the coolwebsearch hijacker... best thing to do is format the computer.

 

[RelaxTheMind]

www.mozilla.com

 

[vapidtransit]

He's off of IE but that is beside the point because I'm not asking how to deal with or remove spyware.

I'm asking for a highly technical explanation of the mechanism by which these programs are able to re-install themselves after I nuke their folders and associated .dll files. Its obnoxious and insidious but interesting enough to have me wondering how it works.

So this is not off topic.