My browser hijacked! :(

Hi All,

I don't know how but somehow sbvr.com has hijacked my browser!
It resets my homepage/search page after every boot! Keeps opening some browser windows alternatively
And worse of it all,
It installs a ugly toolbar on my windows explorer and keeps putting XXX sites shortcuts on my desktop!

I don't know how it got in to my PC, but I am simply unable to remove it.

Searching on NET wasn't of much help. Most of the sites are asking to download some software which is paid one!

Actually I have searched for all startup options (using msconfig and registry) but I am unable to locate file which is resetting my homepage/search page.

Is there any way I can know for sure which ALL programs are starting when Windows boots up??


I have two questions to ask:
1. How do I remove this software?
2. How come it is so easy for a site to get into my PC like this?


Please help me!

Regards,
JD

I did some searching and found out it is called 'Lop' usually it gets into your PC via Porn or MP3 sites, removal instructions are at the following link. Apparently it can be setup to not prompt users which is probably how it installed itself on your machine.

http://allentech.net/parasite/lop.html

HTH

Yeah i've had that, I got it form a damn MP3 site, do a couple of ping, when i pinged Nx01 a machine on my network it was failing as it was messing with my packets, ended up ping somat like, nx01.tjaw.com or somat.

I tried all the guides but couldn't get it to go, so, i had to format.

Be sure to check your hosts file after you clean everything else up. Some of those damn things fiddle with that. I hadn't realized that the default on my IE browser on my brand new laptop had the Install On Demand turned on with no prompt. Some stupid thing like Lop installed while my girlfriend was clicking around (she refuses to use Mozilla just because I use it) and it put a www.google.com entry in my hosts file and pointed it to one of those stupid pay per click "web portals".

Damn that would suck seeing how much google is used now.

If buying a Mac (or even switching to Linux) is out of the question, try using Firebird instead of IE after you fix the problem.

Blame MS "security".

jdk -

I would suggest that if you're going to keep using IE, you make sure install on demand is off completely. Also, make sure that you're being alerted whenever you move from secure to insecure pages. Finally, NEVER download browser toolbars, dialers, etc. off a third party site if you don't know anything about it. Oh - and if it comes with an installer that has an agreement you have to OK... suffer reading through the whole thing. It'll save a lot of suffering later.

Browse the web using a database, hmmmm - maybe pheonix or moz (oh, forgot - can't use pheonix name because they ripped it off) dope! seems to be a habit by them....

Having your browser act like that can also come from a virus. I've fixed several of these, but at the moment I can't remember which virus or the fix. Go to housecall.antivirus.com and scan your system.

If you really want to stop the problems, get mozilla. There is also a browser called Slimbrowser www.flashpeak.com . It less than a meg in size, and is pretty quick. It also has popup stopping abilities, etc.

It seems to run off of IE, but I'm not sure how.

I've seen a couple of products that "enhanced" IE. They usually seem to just be alterations to the basic shell, but some of them are really major gut / rebuilds of the thing. I can't remember what the one was called but it had an "integrated" (sort of) mail client, a popup blocker, completely redone set of security tools, web toolbars, skins, all sorts of stuff. It only cost something like $20.00 too.

There are hundreds of products that run off of/integrated with/developed around IE on the market. Editplus wraps IE when using the browser features, AOL wraps it also (although soon to be changing). If I am not mistaken, you can also wrap a Lingo application around IE. In the next couple of years, there will be thousands and thousands of software packages that will wrap around it.

I have been asking myself for a while now would it be better to write applications around Moz or around IE. Still have yet to come to a conclusion on it, hopefully I will soon though...

I did search on NET. Mostly it got me results where they were recommending me to buy Ad-aware software or some thing else.

Anyways, I have found the solution.

I downloaded this nifty utility to see what is running at start up. http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/s....shtml#autoruns

I simply removed the naughty entries there and their corresponding files from Application data folder and I am through!

Regards,
JD

I still have this tinybar search thing embedded in my ie6 that I can't get rid of. This thing has been there for about 10 months now. It opens in the side bar whenever I click on the search button in the toolbar. I have it set for google but this thing overrides it. I have no clue how I picked it up...