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Skyline Racer

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Hey My Fellow friends on RCNT. I am wondering, Do any of you keep getting About: Blank homepage pop up's when you are trying to visit a particular website? I cannot log into my www.myspace.com, or sometimes look at items on ebay. But here on RCNT, I havent had any problems. I've ran my virus protection, and my webroot spysweeper and restarted. It still is doing this... Can any of you help me out? Any info would be greatly appricated. Thanks! :cheers:


-Skyline
 
I heard about this computer virus thing people talk about. Is it like a cold? Or is it more like smallpox?
 
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Damn you al gore! Nah, I ran my Norton and i deleted 4 things. I thought that would help but i've done everything possible i could to try to fix this.
 
I sure hope so. I saw that movie and I don't think my computer could handle it. Maybe Norton could vaccinate it?
 
Skyline, I was having the exact same problem. I would click on any of my favorites, noting would come up at all. If I typed in say www.rcnitrotalk.com I would get a dns server not found error page. I ran my Norton 2004, bazooka, and adaware, deleted a bunch of crap, and it still didn't work. So I used my system restore, set it back to Jan 1st, now it seems to be working just fine again. I don't know wtf was going on, but I messed with it for two days before I tried that. Give it a try, it may work for you too.
 
Its offical. Norton sucks.

NCNitro- Thanks for the info. I just got my computer back from being cleaned up January 1st. I'll restore to back then. Now will I still have my documents?
 
I don't know, but let me know if it works for you too. I was going crazy trying to get on line. Funny thing is I could check my email just fine, just couldnt surf the net.
 
Microsoft has a spyware beta program available for download. I heard it's really good, but i can't get it to run on my machine for some reason
 
It almost sounds like you might have the Amish Virus.
Since they have no computers or electricity, you are beseached, on your own, to delete random system files.
After which, they thanketh thee.
 
You got jacked. I see about:blank all the time. Running Adaware will clean it up, but there's a registry entry called "pendingfilerename" that will pull a shitton of crap right back (pulls it out of a couple temp directories).

Most spyware cleaners are pretty good, but you still have to poke through the registry, delete crap out of the temp and temp internet files directories and the temp folder(s) in the system directory. If you're on 2K or XP, you'll need to unhide system and protected files and go to each user profile in the doc and settings folder. Look for a folder called local settings, then temp and temp internet files in that folder. Delete all the files and folders in the temp dir and the temp internet files folder. Do this in safe mode. Get all of the profiles. poop will hide in the system profiles, as well as the administrator profile (even though you can't log in as admin in normal mode on XP Home).

Go to the control panel, internet settings and change the home page from there.

Get "hijack this" and scan in the admin login (safe mode), and each user profile. If there's any suspecious looking crap loading up in the scan, google it (might have to use another machine if you can't get online). Be careful about what you 86 in HJT, not all stuff is bad.

Here's a short list of shitware that is the most common source of problems:

wintools
windupdates (not windows update!)
180 solutions
new.net
surf sidekick
msbb.exe
altnet
bargain buddy
sidefind
blazefind
intexp (in registry under hkcu and hklm/software)
myway
mysearch
VX2
whenU
webrebates
and a number of others.....

just about all toolbars are bad
and for Gods sake, don't put Kazaa, morpheous, limewire or any of those others on. There's a reason they're "free", it's called bundled shitware. Just about 99% of the machines I clean up at work (that are loaded with spyware) have one of these P2P programs installed. Read the EULA's for them and you'll see that they install all kinds of crap in the background, and you accept this in order to install the P2P progs. Also, when you clean out the bundleware, the P2P's quit working.

[/rant]

Hope that helps.
401
 
DO NOT EVER go to Grokster, for peer to peer downloading. You'll go nuts trying to get your system back to normal. It will change your homepage and many other things and create nightmares for you.
It also installs files under 'Jupiter' then hides certain ones as Xupiter, so you won't think to look for them trying to find folders to delete. You'll also need to locate a download to remove some of it, but the rest you have to find on your own.
It took me almost 2 days to get mine back to normal, then 2 days later my neighbor, who recommended Grokster, called me to come over and get it out of their computer.
If you can't find all of it, you'll end up doing a System restore to get rid of it.
 
You Guys, Thanks alot for taking your time to try to help me out. I was downloading a software and my computer went to poop. So I had no choice but to wipe it clean with my 5 restore disks. I'm back to factory now. Thanks again but I'm good now!


-Skyline


P.S. I Will be downloading adaware Error. I'll google search it or go to www.download.com
 
I just did some searching, but I wasn't able to find the links. WoodiE provided them in another thread a couple of months age.
Sorry I can't give you the direct links, but these are the downloads he recommended. They are all excellent, and quick to run once or twice a week. One is a trial version, so you can't get updates. The others are freeware.

I run these, as well as the full Norton System Works.

Spyware Doctor
SpyBot Search and Destroy
Spyware Blaster
Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition

Download and install these, then get the updates, then run each program. You won't believe how much they find in there.
Just running a search will bring up the download sites for them.
 
NP, go to www.lavasoftusa.com That's the Ad-Aware official website. There's a download link on the front page, but I always use the one linked to download.com.

Sorry you had to do a restore to get it back online. It usually takes me about 4 to 5 hours to clean up a really bad system. We go through a check list that is about a full page long, with a couple more steps than what I outlined above, but that should help some folks.
 
Error401, thanks again for some VERY usefull information. I'll be printing out your advise for future use for others.

Question for you, Error........ When I have IE or Firefox set to use a blank page as the opening page, and it says About:Blank in the address bar, does that mean it's still in there, or is that normal?
 
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