themeishelping
February 8th, 2009, 11:20 AM
My friend has been having some problems with her computer, namely she has some adware and such that she can't seem to get rid of. I've helped her out as I can, I thought I killed one of them completely [though the other was more elusive], but it seems that they have both come back. I don't really know of a better place to ask for advice here, as this is about as close to an "official" forum as Nod gets, it seems.
Note: she has Nod32 v3 [forget the version number, but it has updated definitions] in addition to Norton's Internet Security package. We've also used Spybot, Adaware, Hijackthis, and a couple of other scanners, as per recommendations. Nothing seems to fix them.
One of them appears to do nothing but overwrite the default search engine for FF and IE to some engine called Yoog instead. It doesn't seem to do anything else, hasn't caused any overt problems, and it does appear to be an actual search engine, but I don't really like the idea of any undeletable programs, as they tend to open doors for other ones.
The other [and more annoying one] is an adbot program that links to "Contextual ads by GlobalAdSolution" or something like that. It gives her popups in both FF and IE [again], even when she's not using either. I have found "fixes" online for this one, but both are FF and IE specific, and take care of the symptoms, but not the problem. I did notice that this process is stemming from one of the svchost entries [the one that also controls DOM info, if that makes a difference]. It is easy to kill if you know what you're looking for, but she doesn't, and I'd rather her not have to kill programs each time she turns her computer on. When I did delete this program, it was listed in at least 2 DLL files in system32, an executable there, and a DLL in the FF plugins folder as well.
Nod32 doesn't detect either of these programs as "bad". Is this the kind of thing which will be passed out in updates shortly, or should I continue to try to fix this the old-fashioned way ? Much of the advice I've read as to the "fixes" of these are things like "reinstall Firefox". Oh, so very helpful. Thought somebody here might have a better idea.
Note: she has Nod32 v3 [forget the version number, but it has updated definitions] in addition to Norton's Internet Security package. We've also used Spybot, Adaware, Hijackthis, and a couple of other scanners, as per recommendations. Nothing seems to fix them.
One of them appears to do nothing but overwrite the default search engine for FF and IE to some engine called Yoog instead. It doesn't seem to do anything else, hasn't caused any overt problems, and it does appear to be an actual search engine, but I don't really like the idea of any undeletable programs, as they tend to open doors for other ones.
The other [and more annoying one] is an adbot program that links to "Contextual ads by GlobalAdSolution" or something like that. It gives her popups in both FF and IE [again], even when she's not using either. I have found "fixes" online for this one, but both are FF and IE specific, and take care of the symptoms, but not the problem. I did notice that this process is stemming from one of the svchost entries [the one that also controls DOM info, if that makes a difference]. It is easy to kill if you know what you're looking for, but she doesn't, and I'd rather her not have to kill programs each time she turns her computer on. When I did delete this program, it was listed in at least 2 DLL files in system32, an executable there, and a DLL in the FF plugins folder as well.
Nod32 doesn't detect either of these programs as "bad". Is this the kind of thing which will be passed out in updates shortly, or should I continue to try to fix this the old-fashioned way ? Much of the advice I've read as to the "fixes" of these are things like "reinstall Firefox". Oh, so very helpful. Thought somebody here might have a better idea.