Mungo

My internet homepage keeps on setting to a weird website. I tried deleting it from my "internet options" and deleting all cookies and it keeps on appearing. Please help! Thanks.

koala

Download Ad-aware. http://www.lavasoftusa.com
For most users, Ad-aware does a pretty good job of taking care of issues like this.

happs22

Run Adaware and spybot. You can get both from www.download.com. I usually get some sort of spyware once or twice a week, from seemingly innocuous sites. These two programs typically clean it up.

I've been fighting two really bad ones this weekend, called BetterInternet and look2me. I got them by trying to look up stats on French Open tennis players. Ridiculous. It's one thing to get crapped on when searching for *ahem* alternative topics, but friggin French Open stats??? I HATE SPYWARE

Anyway, run both programs and see if that works.

Hustn

Ad aware fixed this problem for me last week.

Mungo

First of all, thank you Koala and Happs22. I don't know what I'd do without s2ki.com.

I downloaded ad-aware and spybot and I'm still having the issue. This "here4search.com" search engine keeps on appearing when i open my internet explorer. I tried deleting it from "internet options" and tried deleting all the cookies but the damn thing won't go away. The site has spyware removal but I got to pay $29!! but I don't know what to do.

kadeshpa

Change your homepage in internet options.

koala

Still wont go away? Hmm. I have to get off here for a while, but if you're still having this problem tonight I'll look into it further. There HAS to be a way to remove it for free. (How familiar are you with your registry?)

happs22

Hmm, try going to Lavasoft's website and check the "forum" pages. Sometimes they have some answers there for you.

http://www.lavasoftsupport.com/index.php?

Also, make sure you have your browser closed when you run Adaware or Spybot. I know that some programs are able to reinstall themselves if you've got IE open. I'm having a similar problem with some spyware right now, it just keeps reinstalling itself every time I reboot. . .

Quik S2K

Have you DL's anything that uses here4search.com? I DL'd a tropical screensaver and got a crapload of pop-ups and prety much the same thing as you. I had to actually uninstall teh new programs from my hard drive.

Check your installed programs for anything new and anything that has that name to it. Uninstall it and it should work.

Austblue

If you go to your control panel and then add/remove programs you can view if there is anything that you dont want and remove it. Some programs like the one that Quik got are a vital component within the host program and it will tell you that you cant remove 'x' because it will prevent 'y' from working. Once you know the problem programs go to google and type in the name of the file and 'remove'and search.

Also be sure to update both adaware and spybot as soon as you d/l them because they are constantly being updated and you may need a patch to recognise the current adware that you have.

Once you've updated them, shut down all of your programs and run ad-aware on deep scan and fix problems. Now re-boot and run spybot and fix problems and reboot again. Often adaware and spybot require that you reboot in order for them to clean out some of the spy files.