My computer has a virus or two. :angry:

But a lot of words on lumenlabs are clickable as keywords to popup adds. Words like "work" are underlined, and you can click on them to bring up career advertisements. Words like "hdtv" are underlined and bring up popup advertimesment for hdtvs. Is it a computer virus on my computer or has lumenlab been hacked?

I think you need to run Spybot.

Or dump IE altogether and get something better like Mozilla Firefox, which is far more resistant to adware and rubbish.

i'm a microsoft fan who's defected to firefox for PRECISELY this reason: spyware and security holes in ie.

hit firefox and don't look back.

Yep... it sucks! Can't get rid of it on my PC at work. It's called Ezula or Toptext. Adaware will get rid of it.

I would run adaware and spybot search and destroy( caution with this spyware remover) and then install all of the critical updates from microsoft by windows update. Then I would install Avast antivirus , it's free and does a good job. You need to watch what you install on your computer not all things installed are free they come attached to spyware. Kazaa ,Imesh others come to mind.
I use IExplorer because a lot of the web sites I went to didn't like Mozilla Firefox.
Only 1 infection in 3 months. Dr.Bev or something like that.

I don't want to start a war of browsers. I've found that I can use IE with very little problems if taken properly of. It's my personal opinion. Again do constant critical updates. CS

Despite my linux friends talking about me behind my back, I would be just fine using Avantbrowser, which is a tabbable IE shell with a popup blocker.

BUT, IE for me has an odd javascript problem, which I'm told is inherent to javascript, though I've never witnessed it on other computers: excessive loadtime + a few seconds of hang for open.newwindow javascript calsl (like popups) when I have a ton of windows open.

So I'm using firefox, which I don't see as the huge breakthrough over Avant, Opera, etc, that many other people seem to see it as. (Hell, there was virtually no press for Mozilla when I used it up to 0.9). It does just work however, particularly well compared to IE's handling of the ghettos of the internet.

I'm a bit of a big multi-tasker, as a member of the ADD generation, I believe that a browser should handle 20-100 concurrent websites open without an issue.

Cons:
Excessive memory consumption, up to 400 megs of memory consumed at times.
Excessive CPU consumption, bringing many games to a standstill when I try to play alt tabbed with FF open.
Bad tab management, compared to Opera and Avantbrowser.

Perks:
It IS comparatively resistant to vulnerabilities.
The RSS bookmark feature is nice (though not as polished as it should be).
The emphasis on approved extensions is great, though there needs to be a bigger selection.

I had the mother of all infections for a long time, I spent over a hundred man-hours trying to get rid of it, but finally found someone at the excellant Gladiator security forums which had me kill the last four trojanned DLLs. I blame that on a BHO that autoinstalled on IE and then launched a series of self-healing, replicating ad/spyware launchers/installers.

Regarding cleanup tools, I have the following recommendations:

Uninstall the nastier P2P apps.
Lavasoft Ad-Aware
Spybot Search and Destroy
HijackThis + a google of every article on that list to see if it's legit
CWShredder
The Cleaner
AntiVir
AVG Anti-virus
Spysweeper (I'm not sure if the old version I used was shareware, or I installed a cracked version, the newer version that I installed on someone else's machine expired)

If these don't completely remove whatever it is, and you're too stubborn to reformat, as in my case, I suggest that you post a HijackThis log on the Gladiator Security forums, they are gods at this sort of thing.

i got a good case of About Blank: right now. Now thats a stubborn one.

I miraculouly use almost every proggy that Squalish recommends, and a couple others. (i wonder what sticky thread you've been reading Squalish ) Currently have it supressed but i can't 100% get rid of it. Going to head over to gladiator forums tonite

I hate to say it but "format c:" for that one sjetski71
been there done that got the t shirt

It really seems like it's time to kick Microsoft to the curb. Their days are numbered and that worries me as a Mac user. I like the fact that Apple has only 15% of the market share. It is less of a target that way.

Of course there are more OS choices available for the PC nowadays and I don't see why more people aren't running to them.

Gamers don't have an option, so generally, we're forced to make jump through the hoops required to make Windows our bitch, rather than being led by the nose as the vast majority of users do.

What do you mean, about: blank?

After running Ad-Aware a few times it's time to lock down your IE Hosts file & Registry.
Download update and run Spybot Search & Destroy from here.

After scanning a few times for problems enable Advanced Mode.
Hit the TOOLS menu, select IE Tweaks. select "Lock Hosts file read-only as protection against hackers"
(funny it says that, hackers are who wrote Spybot S&D.)
next select RESIDENT turn on everything. "DSHelper" and "TeaTimer"
This will help FireFox from being hijacked as well (happened to me too).

okay. now whenever a rogue program tries to modify your registry you'll get a little pop up confirmation. Trust me it happens alot. Just make sure you allow your virusscan to make updates ;-)

Okay, now go over to MethLabs and pick up peerguardian lite2 beta 3 or whatever the latest is.
Download the block file relevant to your desired privacy. select the P2P blocklists link.
I'm blocking Anti-p2p/Ads/Spyware/Govt/Military everything.
you'll be amazed at how many websited get pissed off that you're blocking their ads. That's okay because peergaurdian lets you enable HTTP if you like.

This program doesn't give you much feedback. If you are interested in monitoring your blocks, check out the older version 1.0 ...then check your hotmail acct. it's friggin crazy how much stuff it blocks. now most trojans won's be able to talk out.

last and maybe most importantly, pick up the free version of Zone Alarm. Make sure you're running the FREE VERSION, and not the demo.

these programs along with a strong VScan like Norton or Mcafee should keep you cleaned up & hijack free. However my GF always seems to get nasty cookies on my system. heh heh must be the MSN page. eek!

Oh, totally forgot a firewall recommendation: Sygate personal firewall works perfectly and uses almost nil CPU, unlike several of the other freeware firewalls out there.

I may sound a little crazy, but add the microsoft antispyware beta to the adware/spybot combo, and you should at least be able to live with most of your computer for a little while longer.

squalish has a verifiably field tested list. I've used EVERYTHING on that list to fight trash. I ended up going with BitDefender for free antivirus as it's handled everything (virus) i've thrown at it and avg wasn't giving me as much power as i was hoping a free antivirus would.

nice list, squalish. thanks for putting it together.

In follow up to cold steels post, I have to agree on the avast as a anti virus. I have used many different ones over the years but I have been using avast for the past 6 months and I love it. It uses very little resources and when it auto scans or updates, it puts very little strain on the system ie like when playing a game etc it does not bog your system to hell. I found pccillin and others like that bog things right down when they update.

I have been using avast with lavasoft adaware, a hardware firewall and mozilla firefox as a browser and since using that combo I have way less problems with spyware, popups and viruses. Then again I also don't run any p2p junk on my system either so that helps a ton too.

And you can get a 14 month free trial of the home version of avast to test it out, so you can't lose there

Thats the actual name of the trojan, or whetever category its classified in.


pjgibbs, its starting to look like a reformat is necessary, no biggie since norton ghost makes life easier. I was just trying to avoid reinstalling all those proggies, patches and settings that i didn't backup in the ghost file. Maybe i'll give the gladiator forums a shot but...

Windows XP just seems to get worse... it's hard to clean out completely.

I tend to do the clean installs alot more frequently now-a-days.

Most firefox users probably know this already too, but for those that don't this little tweek helps speed up webpage loading ( not that firefox was slow to begin with )

Open Firefox and in the address bar type: about:config

1. Find browser.tabs.showSingleWindowModePrefs and double click on it so it = true
2. Find network.http.pipelining and double click on it so it = true
3. Find network.http.pipelining.maxrequests double click on it and change it from 4 to 100

Wow I didn't know about this but man, it really does speed things up. Thanks alot!

Some of the steps people are suggesting seem slightly overkill to me. I would rather reformat then use 10 different spyware scanners, along with virus scanners etc. This is my fullproof guide which I havn't had to use on my PC since I started keeping windows up to date and always using Firefox:

1. Download and install spybot search and destroy, adaware and the microsoft spyware program. Install them all and update all the definitions. Download hijack this.

2. Reboot into safe mode (press F8 just before windows starts to load then select safe mode).

3. Run a full system scan with all 3 spyware detectors mentioned (1 after the other, not all at once).

4. Check your hosts file with notepad. This is a file called HOSTS with no file extension. In windows xp its in "C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc". Generally speaking, it should only have some commented lines (lines begging with #) and one other line stating 127.0.0.1 localhost. If theres other stuff, particularly things like

231.56.74.23 google.com

etc, back the file up, delete the other stuff and save.

5. Run hijack this and do a scan. This will show you everything starting up with your computer and possible browser hijacks. If theres anything you think is dodgy, let hijack this remove it.

6. Restart your computer in normal mode. If its still infected, reformat the hard drive, and reinstall windows.

i just downloaded microsoft anti spyware beta and about :blank is gone it seems to work great

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...=en&Hash=LJ6SCR

peter

This really speeded up FFX 1.0 in Suse9.2
w00t!

Glad it helped, it drastically improved my browsing times, but like I said firefox was not slow to begin with, but any increase in speed is always a good thing

Yep that did it. Thx for the heads up.

good proggy