Folks,

Dux:

Welcome back. That is fantastic news about repairing your ailing PC. Not since Olga went home to Russia for a long visit has there been such universal relief experienced by one and all...

I hope that your weeks holiday was all that you needed it to be and that you have returned to us with pix of all the pleasure palaces and dens of iniquity of Europe. I cannot wait to see what or whom you've been up to.

I may now cheerfully report much successful progress in getting rid of my own PC's pesky affliction. No, my wife is not going to stop e-mailing her sisters...something else. I have more or less cornered that @##@%%%%# browser hijacker and at least temporarily put it out of business. We had,as it turned out, a nasty root kit infection that took over many system processes and hijacked our browser.

Having dealt with it, I no longer have to click on the IE icon 10 times very fast to get on-line resulting in at least 6 extra copies that have to be shut down one by one. We are no longer re-directed to porn websites to which we never intended to go like nekkeed_ladies_hava_bug4U.com or the ever popular crack site, all_our_crackz_have_infections.net.

I have been able to once again go to security related sites and download programs like Spybot Search and Destroy. These sites had been previously blocked. Happily, Windows can now update itself automatically and AVG Virus software has installed a new version of itself. Joy is almost unconfined around here.

OH, me of little faith. And to think I almost paid someone else to eradicate this hateful, malicious code. OK, you are correct of course, they might have done in a single hour what took me by trial and error several weeks to do. But it was a personal challenge and the end result, though it may be the same, is more rewarding for moi and less so for the un-paid computer Geek. In fact, all the Geek had suggested over the phone was a complete system wipe and OS re-install. Yikes!

Fortunately hijackers don't replicate like other trojans and virus. They are generally only spread by downloading and running a particular bit of code off the Internet from an unsafe or careless site. I suspect that my son accidentally did the honors this time or it might have been me. I have never had an infection on any of my computers of any kind that my virus checker couldn't deal with before. I always keep my definitions up-to-date.

It was a long, hard battle and I must admit that my adversary was very clever if not downright ingenious. My hope is that he, she, or perhaps it is indeed fully vanquished and not just lurking in the shadows of my HDD waiting for an opportunity to return with a bloody vengeance.

There probably are a few vestiges of the beast hidden about that I still must deal with. I find that I cannot go to the AdAware site without the browser going nuts and trying unsuccessfully to redirect me. It will take a bit more time for the mopping up exercise but that being the singular website I am having a problem with, I'm satisfied I've whipped the little monster. grrr


Originally Registered January,2001 Member Number 3044

"Blessed are they who expect nothing, for they shall not be disappointed" - Edmond Gwenn, "The Trouble With Harry"

CELEBRATING EIGHTEEN YEARS and over 20 MILLION VIEWS on SNAFU's HWH thread- April 2019