OT: about:blank homepage hijacker..

[David E. Gervais]

I got rid of it by removing any and all startup programs/dll's. Now in msconfig, the 'Startup' tab is completely empty.

I have removed all instances of about:blank in the registry and have rebooted several times, the problem seems to be solved. (until me or the system needs and runs one of the old programs/dll's that used to be in the startup.

FYI: the basic procedure for removing this kind of thing is as follows..

install and run Spybot Search & Destroy,
install and run AdAware (it catches some stuff spybot misses.)
scan your registry and remove any instances of about:blank. (or replace them with your original homepage.)
run HijackThis it catches even more leftover stuff and it can produce a log file that tells you what apps are running and therefore might be corrupt.

following this procedure did not fix the problem. and so I took the more drastic measure of not having any of the startup apps in the registry. (fyi: simply toggling them off in the msconfig does not prevent them from being re-activated by the worm. but if the worm finds no entry to 'modify' it aparently cannot install.

Time will tell if any of the 'startup' apps were critical to my system, but I always have them toggled off in the msconfig anyway, so I don't forsee any problems.

Mozilla is proving to be a very nice browser, I doubt that I will ever return to IE.

nuf said, Cheers!

[ July 05, 2004, 16:40: Message edited by: David E. Gervais ]