rcecale,

Nice work. I have almost every spyware program and I still couldn't get rid of the cool web search. The spyware guys really have to put whatever that CWS program checks, into their updates.

I was like a nerd going through my registry trying to manually delete CWS. I am sane again.

Anthony.

Thanks for the tips guys. Just loaded Firefox. I've used it for 2 minutes and already love it.

I downloaded this after reading about it in the OT forum. It's has been problem free for the 2 months or so that I have been using it. I highly recommend it....

Reviving this old thread to give microsofts link to their new adware destroyer. For those that may have been infected by the almost impossible to kill coolwebsearch (about blank homepage hijacker) ... this program will search your system and remove it and a ton of other adware or malware programs that bogs your system down.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=321cd7a2-6a57-4c57-a8bd-dbf62eda9671&displaylang=en

Quick related question:

In IE, under tools, CONTENT, Autoupdate I have autocomplete turned on for web addresses and userids/passwords. Which is fine. If I clear out the history and temp internet files, there are still some pesky URL's that come up, including some Pelican addys. Anyone know how to completely delete all history of all URL's and still be able to use the type ahead feature?

Thanks,
-Z.

Shift + Delete if you use Firefox. Sorry not much help.

I will second johncj8989's suggestion. Microsoft's new antispyware program is pretty damn good. Then again Microsoft has an unfair advantage in that they have the source code.

Netscape and Mozilla are both good, but you need to keep IE for the occasional page that only works with IE. The other two are not immune, but they are targetted less than IE.

Spybot Search & Destroy is better than Ad-Aware by lavasoft.

Also, Trend Micro PC-Cillin is a great virus & spyware software. Better than Norton or McAfee. and PC-Cillin gets updated almost every day. But it's not free like Spybot

another way to go would be to not use Kazaa etc to steal music.

I now use Microsoft's Anti-SpyWare program (it used to be Giant Software). You can download it from Microsoft's website and it's free. I have dumped Mozilla FireFox because of the many issues I've had with it. Run the Microsoft spyware program, keep your anti-virus updated, use a hardware firewall and don't download crap (Kazaa, Weather Bug and many, many others).

or you could just buy a Mac...

Yep, the MS antispyware is pretty good.

You don't have to be using Kazaa to get virus's and spyware

Netscape is basically the same as Mozilla, and it works great 99% of the time. About the only 2 places that I have a problem and use IE are the Citibank website and the checkfree website.

I have a software firewall. Hardware is nice, but software has it's advantages too.

Mac's also have virii and spyware, but not as much as MS. There are benefits to running Mac stuff, but there are also benefits of running Windows.

A couple weeks ago I de-loused a friend's computer, and the CWS crap one of the things she had. I found a utility specifically for it, can't remember now, google is your friend.

I swear, the next PC that gets dropped off at my house to be cleaned up is going home with RedHat on it...

Hahah, Yeah Thom, I understand, I'm the local family/Friend PC fixer, and even have some brought in from Austin. Can you imagine the mess a computer Novice could make in Linux if they had root or su access? Pretty soon I'm going to start putting remote desktop and a firewall on all of the PC's that I service so I can fix them remotely.