I ran into a problem using Lavasoft’s Ad-aware, it hijacked my browser to MSN.com. It took me a long time to figure out what was happening. Lavasoft says coming versions of Ad-aware won’t do this.
If your home page is set to “about blank“ you might run into the same problem I had.
It seems that some hacker is using “about blank” as a way to get around spyware removal programs. So when you run Lavasoft’s Ad-aware it shows a “possible browser hijack” when you have set your home page as “about blank”. If you allow Ad-aware to fix this, it resets your browser to the Windows default of MSN.com.
If this is the problem you are having, instead of allowing Ad-aware to fix the problem, select the “possible browser hijack” and mark it to be ignored.
If you are worried that your system is infected, first run Ad-aware with your home page set to MSN.com, if it runs clean, then change your home page to “about blank” and run Ad-aware again, then mark the “possible browser hijack” to ignore.
That is EXACTLY what is happening, although I am sure I still have spyware not being recognized by AdAware. Thanks for the info.