Freeper Help Needed to remove adwareware from my PC

self, vanity ^ | 3/27/05 | Passionfruit

[backhoe]

The SWI forum is excellent, and their front page should have a list of other forums, like Spyware Warriors, if that's more to your liking.

Basically, you register with them, check all their "pinned" or "sticky" posts to see what kind of info they require to help you, and go from there.

It usually takes several tries to purge that garbage, and it really helps to have an experienced forum helper read your logs and guide you through it. There's a lot of damage you can do without guidance, because sometimes you have to edit the registry as well.

[TheLion]

I was reading on www.theeldergeek.com (forum) and got a great link that explains the CWS virus (CoolWebSearch)and how to remove it manually:

http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/CoolWebSearch.html

The about:blank cws virus is constantly changing and coming up with more ways to infect our computers.

You are right, at some point, you do need to edit the registry.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Get rid of Norton. Uninstall it and clean out any references to it. Download and install a copy of AVG Free. It is a superior product to Norton.

Second, download AdAware Personal SE and also, Spybot Search and Destroy. Install them and do full scans on the PC with them. All three of these software packages are easily located via Google.

Lastly, DO NOT USE MS Internet Explorer. Use it one last time to download a copy of Firefox v1.2. This should be your default browser from now on. As a matter of fact, if you use Outlook Express for a mail client, discontinue using that as well. Download Mozilla's Thunderbird mail client.

Once all of these steps are done, you can start looking into a nice little software firewall. I recommend Outpost. It too, like all others mentioned here, is free.

I know all of this probably won't sit well from your Mac trained computing habits...but it must be done.

[TheLion]

Thanks for rementioning the SWI forum....outstanding! At some point soon, I may post my hijackthis results and let them analyze it.

[TheLion]

Thought I would let you know that I got rid of my computer infection....after much reading, downloading and trying different things.

I found this gread little free program called X-raypc. It is 317kb but very useful. It identified 2 processes that I had seen come up in the Anti-Vir and Microsoft AntiSpyware. Processes that these programs simple blocked.

X-Raypc not only identifies the running processes but will let you get rid of it, whereas these other programs wouldn't.

These were running processes that don't show up in taskmanager.

Check it out!

http://www.x-raypc.com/

[backhoe]

Thanks- copied & saved.