HELP!

[Amanzi]

Im so mad right now I could spit acid!!

A friend of mine came over with her 14 year old son. We went shopping and the little twerp stayed at my house.. didnt want to go shopping with a bunch of girls. Anyway, he asked if he could play an online game, I never thought twice about it and said sure.

Anyway, I have just had my system restored and cleaned up. When I went online last night I had some lycos browser thingy in my address bar and things trying to dial into my computer... I ran my adaware and it detected a whole load of stuff stuff. IM FURIOUS!!!! I have a 5 year old son who plays on nick jr and kid game sites, he knows how to go online by himself.. These stuff things keep popping up on my screen.. xxx thingys! I cant get rid of them. Ive tried to clean everything off, but everytime I reboot they come back. I just hope my son has no idea what he was looking at!!!!!!!!!!!

I phoned his mother and let her know about the situation. She told me she was very sorry, and she had, had problems with him in the past...

Please if anyone knows how to get rid of this darn crud permenantly please tell me how!!!!!!!

[Rainband]

Try going into control panel Internet objects,settings, view objects and delete the ones you don't recognize. Also dlete the cookies and history. If that doesn't work search for them if they have a title and delete then manually. Good Luck Bron

[GalvestonDuck]

Also, try Spybot Search & Destroy in addition to you Ad-Aware.

I'd suggest "regedit" stuff, but I did that once and completely deleted my recycle bin. I'm now a legend here at UTMB with the Info Services guys. Who deletes their own recycle bin?

[Rainband]

Also, try Spybot Search & Destroy in addition to you Ad-Aware.

I'd suggest "regedit" stuff, but I did that once and completely deleted my recycle bin. I'm now a legend here at UTMB with the Info Services guys. Who deletes their own recycle bin?

spybot is a good idea..Thanks shawn..I forgot that one

[Guest]

Here is something else you can try:

Where you can control you Temporary Internet Files and cookies, reduce the amount of space available for the Temp Files.

If you are using Internet Explorer, go to "Tools", "Internet Options". If the "General" tab is not already open, click it.

There is a slider at the bottom of the dialog box; reduce that as far as it will go.

I have found a bunch of crap like this finding its way into the TEMP Internet folder. Just reducing the available space may help.

I have a feeling, Bron, that the 14 year old probably will not be near your computer again.

[Skywatch_NC]

Seems this kid's mother would put a filter block on their family computer!

Good luck, Bronnie!

Eric

[Amanzi]

Ok im going to give some of these ideas a try...

What is the differance between adaware and spybot???

What did you say Duck??? what is "regedit" ???

Brian... It it were up to me that little guy wouldnt go near a breathing thing in a looooooong time!!!

Thanks John

[Lindaloo]

Bron, you need to get you pop up blocker.

[Stephanie]

Zone Alarm is good too. It filters out programs that are trying to access your PC.

Good luck Bronnie! Your friend should've INSISTED that he came with you if she's "had problems with him in the past". I would never remotely risk something happening with one of my friend's things!

[Rainband]

I like ZoneAlarm too. Goggle has a really good PopupBlocker. It's free!!! too. Keep us posted Bron!!!

[Wnghs2007]

Somehow some of that stuff got down loaded onto my computer and I had to destroy its whole image and reimage it to get it gone. I lost all my files and everything . So I almost lost the computer for eternity. I let my cousin play on it a few months back so I guess when that happend.

[streetsoldier]

I had a similar problem when one of my stepsons was living with us..."spam" is ONE thing, but he downloaded 1GB of "stuff flakes" on our old CyberMax, and crashed the thing....cost us $200 before it was all said and done (which happened when we ditched the older one and "got a DELL").

Debi caught it first...imagine awakening, opening the browser to check E-mails and being confronted by two MASSIVE
b bs, from a series of pop-ups that never ended? That was in 1999...never again (we threw him out).

[george_r_1961]

No one EVER touches my computer but me..EVER.

[Anonymous]

This also happened to me. One of my husbands friends spent a few days with us and my computer is in the guest room. He dowloaded sooooo much stuff and instead of my yahoo coming up when I tried to sign on the first day he left it came up a sex toolbar for stuff sites. So I restarted the computer and instead of making the giggly noise it usually makes when it come on I hear moaning then there is a stuff picture. This happened over and over again. We even had a computer programmer come over and look at it. The only thing that was left to do was recover the entire system and start from manufacturer's point. I lost it all. I hope you have better luck. Oh yeah and by the way I have not spoken to his friend in almost 2 years. Made me sooo mad!!!!! Good Luck.

[Guest]

May wanna go to add/remove programs as well and look for things that done belong there. This is where alot of those programs are run from on your computer.

Let me know if you need anything with that and how it goes.

Good luck with it all.

[wx247]

Wow, I am suprised at how many people this has happened to. I can see a 14 yr. old doing it (not justifying it, but it makes sense) but a grown adult. The adult definitely should have known better!!!

Hope all goes well Bronwyn.

[azskyman]

Amanzi, I had a similar challenge after my son began using KAZAA to download and upload music. I had new search bars and popups that showed up. It completely assigned a new home page to Internet Explorer, too.

I ended up virtually uninstalling just a lot of my programs, then buying Macafee to clean up for viruses (and spyware detection), completely wiping out the cookie file and all temporary internet stuff, and then reinstalling what I want.

I have not had a problem since.

Good luck...and next time...NO COMPUTER TIME!

[pawlee]

go to My Computer / C: / Windows and look for a folder called "Temp". open this folder and delete EVERYTHING except the following three folders, Cookies, History, Temporary Internet Files. also delete any folders having a sequence of numbers as the name.

alot of times browser hijacks and malicious exe. and dll. files go here. you probably have all kinds of mysterious exe. files in your SYSTEM32 folder as well which are a nightmare to determine what to remove. once a stuff surfer opens a frame farm which is basically a single page with a million javascript pop up's, the surfer is screwed. in the case of this kid, he probably opened everything prompting for download because these pesky things like to keep prompting you till you do. we have a public computer here at work and in the past four years, i have learned quite a bit about how this stuff poop operates since people don't give a damn about the machine since it isn't theirs. good luck, cleaning up stuff is like trying to remove motor oil from a white cloth...

[Amanzi]

Well guys... thanks for all the help!!

It seems to me that I have managed to get out the garbage!!

I found a whole load of stuff in my program folder. I ran adaware and it found NOTHING! I knew other stuff was on there. I ran a free scan from xspy (or something like that) and it found LOADS! Problem is you have to pay for the program to remove it, but I then tried spy bot and it destroyed most of them. Then I ran the free scan again, and removed the other files by doing a search from the names that came up with the free scan.

I honestly can not believe the garbage that was on there! That stupid annoying clock thingy that tells you your clock may be set wrong.. was really tough to get rid of! But YIPPPEEEE, my puter seems to be well now

Hey Bill, at least Debbie got a pair of b bs I got well... well it was just plain NASTY! lol My hubby walked in while all these pop ups kept coming on and he looked at me then the screen then turned his head upside down to view something on the screen better...then looked at me again, and said.... "hun what you doing" ? It was very very comical actually. Needless to say the 14 year old got the tounge lashing of his life!!!!!!

[coriolis]

If you used spy bot, make sure that you checked "all scans" to remove the usage tracks, which are records of files that were opened on your computer. These records go everywhere on the computer, even the registry. Internet explorer, windows explorer, word, media player, and others all keep a record of files that were opened, even if the files were deleted.

Like on windows media player, if you go to File, Recent, there could still be a record of the mpegs that were played. It's harmless, but annoying. You could also use media player media library to search for stray mpegs on your computer in odd places.

Spybot does not remove usage tracks from quicktime player. You have to open quicktime player and clear the list.