PC Experts: My friend fucked up my IE. Any ideas?

[Colin Ex]

There was a party going on in the dorms last weekend. One of my friends, while messing around with my computer a little, found himself confronted with a pop-up that said "ENLARGE YOUR PENIS! CLICK HERE!" And, since he was a little inebriated at the time, his reflexes weren't quite as good as they normally were. He clicked on it, and about 400000 pop-up windows vomited onto my computer from IE.

Since then, I've run Adaware a few times and Norton Corporate a time or two as well. I think I've gotten all the malware and shit off my box, but Internet Explorer is still pretty fucked up.

From time to time, when I click a link it'll send me to some weird ass website and the website will tell me that the one I want isn't available. And then a fuckton of popups come up. Also, when I'm browsing, certain words are hyperlinked completely out of the blue (such as love and phone) whenever they appear in the text of what I'm looking at. The status bar, when I move my mouse over them, says whatever the hyperlinked word says (meaning: the hyperlink "love" says I would go to the destination "love". Normally the hyperlink "Click Here" would send me to "Http://www. and so on.")

Is there anything I can do, short of saying fuck it and uninstalling IE, that'll fix this shit?

THanks in advance, guys.

-C

(Subject edit for clarity)

[Kamika]

1. look in the uninstall menu

I once had a spyware that no program found.. then I found it in the uninstall menu

[trotsky]

2. Also run Spybot

http://security.kolla.de

Picks some up stuff that AdAware doesn't.

[BigDaddyLove]

3. While this post may not be particularly constructive in.......

answering your question (and I apologize in advance), I would just dump IE altogether and go with Netscape....so much better in my opinion.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

4. kamika has a good idea

but you may end up having to look manually through the registry (yes, a HUGE pain in the ass) to find that which is messing things up for you. And uninstalling IE will likely NOT fix the problem if there is a registry entry or hidden file somewhere.

Kick your 'friend's' ass
TheProdigal

OnEdit : to remove valley-girl-speak

[TreasonousBastard]

5. What AdAware doesn't do...

like browser hijackers, Spybot and Spyware Blaster may do. Get them here:

http://www.pricelessware.org/2004/PL2004SECURITY.htm


More stuff here, like WebWasher and Proxomitron that come in handy:

http://www.pricelessware.org/2004/PL2004INTERNET.htm

If you insist on using IE, and there are reasons everyone ends up using it sometime, you need protection from hijackers and other nasties.

[dolo amber]

8. Yup yup

Sounds like a browser hijaker to me as well. Definitely do the Spybot thing. Also, if you don't already use it, get the Google Toolbar. It has a built-in pop-up stopper which is excellent. Might come in handy in the future if said friend is around and feeling "inadequate". ;)

Good Luck! :hi:

[ProdigalJunkMail]

9. google toolbar...

the pop-up stopper is worth the download! I refuse to use IE without a pop-up stopper in place...

TheProdigal

[democracyindanger]

6. ProdigalJunkMail has a good idea

Kick your friend's ass.

[Disandra]

7. IE sucks..

...sorry I couldn't be more helpful than that. I do agree with the post above and dumping IE all together for Netscape and would go one step further: dump Microsoft all together and go Linux. I did about 6 months ago, and haven't had any problems what so ever. :-)

[NashVegas]

10. 1. Get Mozilla

http://mozilla.org

3. I don't know the sites offhand, but if you google properly, you might be able to find some places that walk you through using DOS (not MS-DOS) to get into and clean out your hidden directories.

2. Go into your Program Files folder and look at apps you don't recall putting in. Specifically look for stuff that got put in on the date your friend went nuts. Also check out your Temporary Internet files folder and windows/temp/ and /start/ folders for the offender if you can't find it in program files.

(edited to change order)

[Mudcat]

11. Try the Opera browser

www.opera.com

It's free, it stops pop-ups and pop-unders, and best of all, it loads websites about 50% faster than IE & Netscape.

[finecraft]

12. CW Shredder.... worked great for me

Spent $100.00 for a tech to come to my house to fix a problem that sounds like the one you have. He couldn't get anywhere. I found this program, ran it once, and my computer's worked like a charm ever since. http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/cwshredder.zip