Browser Homepage Hijacking - Fed Up With It !!

[honeybee]

I am now fed up with the browser homepage hijacking I find with my Windows XP system. Every couple of days I see the homepages of Opera, IE and Chrome set to either www.assistmypc.org or (more recently) freewaretracker.org or something.

The last time I had observed this and posted in here, I was referred to the Malwarebyte's Anti-malware. I had used it to clean up the PC once. For the past two days I have been using a new downloaded copy of the anti-malware, which says it has cleaned up all the infections, but on restarting the PC the problem comes back.

Can someone give me a permanent solution to this menace?

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[Nightwalker83]

Maybe you have malware on your system? Scan it.

Edit:

After rereading your post your have already do what I originally suggested. Not sure if this would help?

[penagate]

Stop installing adware.

[BackWoodsCoder]

do you use system restore points? Some pieces of malware make it into these backups and can regenerate from there. Either that or whatever is latched onto your system is being regenerated because the spyware removal tool isn't catching all of the malware.

You can also use hijack this to check if anything has specifically latched onto a browser.

[mendhak]

Stop browsing porn, cracks and warez sites.

[BackWoodsCoder]

Stop browsing porn

You can do that?

[baja_yu]

You can do that?

No you can't, and that's the catch.

[kleinma]

I use a combo of malware bytes and Microsoft security essentials to clean out most infections. There has been very little that those 2 as a combo don't get clean.

Make sure if you are using malwarebytes that you check for updates first, as they are released daily. I have seen scans come up empty when an update has not been done, only to have it find several things after getting the update and scanning again.

Nice thing with malware bytes free version is it is not real time, so you can have it on your machine for manual scanning along with an active real time resident scanner.

You could also check out what plugins you have installed to IE (unless you are using different browser) and see if it may just be a plugin that is changing your homepage.

You could always run autoruns from sysinternals and post the ARN file it exports if you wanted me to take a look.

[BackWoodsCoder]

+ 1 to the above. Malware bytes is great.

You could also download Daphne and get a better look at all the processes which are running on your computer. One of my favorite tools to use when something latches onto your system, helps you track down where the process is being started from and it lets you set traps to kill unwanted processes when they start (which is useful if said process is preventing you from updating a virus DAT file or the like).

[abhijit]

Can someone give me a permanent solution to this menace?

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Write your own browser.

[BadgerBadger]

If all else fails, try posting a HiJack This log on the techguy forums. They can usually tell you what to do to get rid of it for good.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

Get a Mac

[kleinma]

Yes, Macs do so little, viruses don't even run on them

[NeedSomeAnswers]

Get a Mac

Or an Etchasketch, that way if you get a Virus you can just shake it and it will disappear !

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

Or an Etchasketch, that way if you get a Virus you can just shake it and it will disappear !

Don't try to hijack dilbert jokes in a forum full of geeks.

[moonman239]

Use Firefox. Or get a Mac.

[kleinma]

The last few viruses I cleaned out of peoples machines came in through firefox actually...

[mendhak]

It just (further) proves that the problem is with the people, not the browser.

[kleinma]

I agree.

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

Browsers don't spam people, people spam people.

[honeybee]

Finally, while checking for this pest, I found a thread that also suggested getting rid of the system restore points and then scanning the whole system again. Did that and the problem seems to have been fixed.

@Mendhak, with no porn to surf, the internet isn't much use anyways

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[mendhak]

Touch. I mean touché.

[KiwiDexter]

But anyway back to the porn ...