Chris M.
Flashlight Enthusiast
Last night while aimlessly wandering the Internet looking for nothing much in particular, I must have stumbled past one of those script-kiddie sites, or something similar. No idea when or where, and I only discovered something was amiss today when I fired up IE6 and was directed to some spyware-infested search/index/banner-farm thing. I`ve met these before and didn`t worry about it - something probably just switched my homepage settings. But, on trying to change it back to my usual blank page, I found that the IE settings panel had been disabled, throwing up some warning about "this operation has been cancelled due to restrictions enabled on this computer". WTF?!! I then go to the Control Panel and launch the internet settings from there, and find the home-page controls all greyed out so I can`t change them either. Only by manually editing the registry could I remove this nasty page.
Running Spybot and Ad-Aware only found Alexa-related components and one tracking cookie which were removed. AVG and Trend Micro Housecall havn`t found anything viral. I ran the IE "auto repair" which didn`t do anything. I tried reverting back to the previous install of IE and then reinstalling IE6, which also did nothing.
Now IE is running very slowly, there would seem to be some kind of keylogger in place cos everything I type takes ages to show up. I`m reluctant to do much of anything until I get this crap off my machine, whatever it is. So I`m turning to you guys for help.
Please - does anyone know what I might have picked up? Does anyone know how I can get rid of it? I did do a full backup not so long ago so formatting is a resort, even if just a last one. I`d prefer not to do that though.
I would say I`m a reasonably knowledgeable home user but not an expert. I`ve tried looking for nasties in the registry but just don`t know my way round there well enough, and I don`t want to try deleting things from the system folders either.
Please help! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif
Suffice to say I`m not entering any passwords, credit card details or other sensitive information until I`m sure this serious problem has been dealt with.
Many thanks in advance!
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif
Running Spybot and Ad-Aware only found Alexa-related components and one tracking cookie which were removed. AVG and Trend Micro Housecall havn`t found anything viral. I ran the IE "auto repair" which didn`t do anything. I tried reverting back to the previous install of IE and then reinstalling IE6, which also did nothing.
Now IE is running very slowly, there would seem to be some kind of keylogger in place cos everything I type takes ages to show up. I`m reluctant to do much of anything until I get this crap off my machine, whatever it is. So I`m turning to you guys for help.
Please - does anyone know what I might have picked up? Does anyone know how I can get rid of it? I did do a full backup not so long ago so formatting is a resort, even if just a last one. I`d prefer not to do that though.
I would say I`m a reasonably knowledgeable home user but not an expert. I`ve tried looking for nasties in the registry but just don`t know my way round there well enough, and I don`t want to try deleting things from the system folders either.
Please help! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif
Suffice to say I`m not entering any passwords, credit card details or other sensitive information until I`m sure this serious problem has been dealt with.
Many thanks in advance!
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/ooo.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/frown.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif