Need help fighting Spyware

[Misho]

Recently i have been having computer problems with what i think is spyware. i downloaded a song from a website and started having strange stuff on my computer ever since.
every couple of days or so i get a shortcut (or more than one) which links to different websites. i delete the shortcuts just to get new ones after 2-3 days. my internet explorer open-up page has now become changed to www.hotsearchbar.com i readjusted it back to its normal setting, just to have it change automatically back to www.hotsearchbar.com after a while. (my mozilla stat up page didnt change though)

can u diagnose the problem ? how can i detect if i have spyware on my computer ? and more importantly, how can i remove it ??

[Rockefella]

Download any/all of these: Ad-aware 6 by Lavasoft, Spybot Search + Destroy, Microsoft Anti-Spyware, and WinPatrol. Do a full-system scan and then remove/quarantine what has to be cleaned out.

[Prius]

here this can help.

First, go into control panel and remove the hot search bar. (I got a simular thing called my search, I forgot where it came from but I got rid of it in less than 10 minutes.)

download Ad Aware, Spybot SD, and microsoft anti spyware. remove any toolbars that aren't of anything you know of (like if you haev any searchbars other than Google or yahoo, or any toolbars you don't reconize.).



run the CPU in safe mode, run all the scanners.

I thnink the reason that Fire Fox wasn't changed was becasue they don't make toolbars for it, and since they are attached to IE, they will hack into IE and play around with it.

but please post some screenshots so I can see what you are dealing with.

[Clivey]

Ah, this happened to me when I first got broadband...ended up with trojan virus installers all over the place, as Rockefella and Prius have already advised, download Ad-Aware etc. You could try www.download.com to get them for free, it's a pretty safe website but for god's sake be careful...it took me months to de-bug my computer after all of that spyware, crap etc. was shovelled onto it.

People should be tortured for creating stuff like that...starting with Bill Gates

[Prius]

I came up with an idea that will maek millions.

it is an antivirus tool, it will find a Virus, automatically delete it, and send a supervirus straight to the CPU that gave you the Virus!

[Rockefella]

I came up with an idea that will maek millions.

it is an antivirus tool, it will find a Virus, automatically delete it, and send a supervirus straight to the CPU that gave you the Virus!

Yeah, no.

[Clivey]

And if the person that sent it you had this 'invention' as well?

You'd end-up with a worse one straight back and the situation would go from bad to worse...nah, we just need to find out which parasites create this sort of trash and go and trash their hardware when they turn their back. Either that or go and wreck them!

If anyone spending hours staring at a computer screen is sad, it's the people that create this - they probably get off over thinking about the disruption and inconvenience they cause, it makes me wanna choke somebody just thinking about it!