OT: Malware

[MAGS]

To all the computer gurus,

I've played with computers for quite a while, but this one has me stumped. I have no idea how, but Zonealarm disabled itself the other night and allowed a Malware/browser hijacker to place itself in my computer somewhere. I've used Spybots, AdAware and NAV (all updated, as of yesterday), and fixed a few problems, but the main one still exists. I still have this little prick changing my homepage to about: blank. I have tried quite a few workarounds, but the persistent bug re-loads itself.

Please help.

[YIIR8]

Know nothing about such things Mags, cept stay way from them P8rn sites :lol: :lol: :lol:

[GPT]

Mags , had a similiar problem a few weeks ago.It sounds like the coolweb search adware.I can't remember the site name but do a search on the net for CWSHREDDER.It will get rid of it for good.

[Fixel]

Try starting in "Safe Mode" and run AdWare or the like?

Or boot from an AV cd (like NAV) and scan

[Glenn@Marranos]

Its my policy here that when anything goes funny, FLATLINE IT.

Start nice and fresh again :doh:

[Scud]

If it is just the browser, then this baby will fix it for you (well at least allow you to remove those nasty IE hijacks).

http://pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,23611,00.asp

Me, I prefer to use Firefox and only revert to IE if the site just won't run under Firefox.

[huggies]

Agreed only use IE for windows updates
Firefox rocks i love tabb'd browsing and its a shitload quicker to load pages etc
Also a nice little download moniter

[MAGS]

Mags , had a similiar problem a few weeks ago.It sounds like the coolweb search adware.I can't remember the site name but do a search on the net for CWSHREDDER.It will get rid of it for good.

GPT,

Love your work :D ... Cwshredder got rid of it (haven't re-booted yet, but should be good)... CWSearch.x apparently was the culprit :mad: .... all gone now (finger's crossed)

Thanks again, saved me a format C.

[Emre]

Good to see you've got it sorted.

Unfortunately, CWShredder is not being updated anymore.

The guy that used to do it can't keep up with all the different variants popping up. There are a lot of different versions of the CoolWebSearch going around.

[XLR8 V8]

A bit of info for the future .... use HijackThis or CWShredder to clear any existing browser hijackers, then ditch Adaware - these days it's next to useless.
Use a combo of Spybot Search and Destroy and also SpySweeper (www.webroot.com) to keep your system clean of most problems.

[PepeLePew]

Cant agree on Adaware for regular (non technical) users, though we do use the Pro version with AdWatch. It does most of everything and doesnt take a genius to run it. Our tech guys use HijackThis for the exceptions and dont have any other issues. NAV though? Im not sure about others experiences but we run the Corp Edition at work and at least once a week I see something slipping onto the machines we cant detect and have to manually remove.

Not terribly useful.

[XLR8 V8]

Cant agree on Adaware for regular (non technical) users, though we do use the Pro version with AdWatch. It does most of everything and doesnt take a genius to run it.

My comments are based around an array of tests that have been completed by a number of review sites as well as myself. While most Spyware removal/protection programs will miss something that another program will pick up, Adaware is found to miss much more than it's fair share. On one test machine, Adaware with the latest updates was found to miss around 15 instances compared to 3 for Spybot and 2 for Spysweeper. Running both Spybot and Spysweeper together (without Adaware) caught all installed instances.

You are right about it's simplicity and it is certainly better for the average user than to have no protection at all - but much better alternatives are available and not totally for tech-heads.

Important info: http://pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117372,00.asp