I've been hijacked!
 

My home computer was hijacked by the coolwebsearch.com parasite. I tried the spysweeper software, but that didn't completely remove the problem.

Now whenever I boot up the internet, my home page is about:blank.

Any suggestions on how to get rid of this spyware?

go here and learn. There are a few programs you'll need to get rid of it and even then you'll likely have to post your registry info for one of the Gurus to review. It took me all day to learn about, get a guru to help, and finally eradicate the cw virus. Here is the site.

http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?

Thanks, daddy. My son likes to download music. I kept telling him it was only a matter of time before something bad was going to happen. It finally jumped up and bit me on the ass.

Pop up ads and this type of spyware are ruining the internet.

The theory is that the CW virus comes from clicking on certain Popup ads though they don't know which ones. I don't recall ever doing so, but I'm sure I've hit some by accident. I don't download music, so I wouldn't say that did it, though if you're trying to get him to stop, far be it from me to take away a tool from a parent:)

Good luck

I suspect you're right about the virus coming from a pop up ad, but he loads that Kazaa program on the computer and after a couple of days, it's running so slow I have to uninstall that program. When i run ad-aware, i come up with 200 or so spyware files that have to be quarantined. That can't be good.

Time to break down and get him his own machine.

i stopped using internet explorer and switched to netscapes mozilla firefox.........all my problems went bye bye :D
the fact that it's a free browser just sweetened the deal.

:eek: That's me wondering how i can get this free magical browser.:confused:

Is the netscape browser immune to this type of problem?

Sounds like a good deal - fixing the parasite for free!

Use WinMX instead of Kazaa for d/l-ing music - it's spyware-free!

http://www.winmx.com

Here's the download page: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
I happily converted as well.

I used CA's (Computer Associates) Anti Virus to rid my nieces PC of CoolCrap. She either got it from Kazza or Bearshare.

I always cure such problems using a "system restore point". XP has this slick little habit of creating restore points (or you can create your own at any point). As an example, I think one gets created everytime you install one of those "critical updates" (that we all always install - right?).

I've had the same kinda hijacking happen and all the wizards on my PC board couldn't seem to come with a solution. I killed everything I could (whatever there was) with Norton Anti-virus and Adaware and then did a restore to a "restore point".

Problems all solved.

The only downside with this little trick is that you would lose any installs or saves since the restore point - but you can back-up any necessaries prior to using "restore".

Just click on "help" and search "system restore wizard". Off you go toto...

Thanks Pelicans, looks like you guys have been down this road b4. I don't mind trending away from Bill Gate's products. Especially since all virus/adware/spyware/trojan horses/worms seem to target Windows-based programs.

FWIW, there are several variants of the CW virus. Some can be removed via AV software, most cannot and require manual removal. If your lucky, you have an early one and it can be removed by running a program called cwshredder. Just google that name, dowmload and run. The guy that made the program gave up a while back as the virus was morphing too fast for him to keep up. If the program locks up, try it in safemode. Odds are it won't solve all your problems, but hey someone has to be lucky.

Firefox is the *****. Next best thing to Kerry coming clean about him & the governor of New Jersey.

I had to reformat someone's computer after they got infected with some variant of the CWS crap. No matter what I did, it kept popping back up.

The most important thing is to have all the Windows Updates installed, otherwise you are really at risk. Check out this article .
And never ever click on Yes or No on a pop-up window, only click on the the X in the upper right hand corner.

I have had good results from using the online scanner at www.spywareguide.com

Craig,

Click on this link to download CW-Shredder. A program designed to do away with CoolWebSearch from your computer.

***Note*** The download will start automatically and will ask you where you want to save the file.

Randy

Whenever Im stumped about something my car is doing the PelicanParts tech forums are the first place I go to for an answer or an explanation.

If you ever get hit with a bad browser hijack that you cannot get rid of with the conventional stuff try finding a technical forum for computer stuff. There are guys and gals posting on computer forums that have all of this stuff figured out already.

I usually just search for a 'removal tool xxx' where xxx is the thing I cant seem to remove. The tech forums never fail.

Once its gone do the conventional registry and spy-bot cleanup stuff. Install Mozilla and then delete the IE icon from your desktop.

Sherman,
How true!!

Guys, this is simple. Switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox and all this crap is just a bad memory. No more hijackings, spyware, history issues etc. GONE, DONE.

Thats what I did... much better now

I even had the ones that would open up applications..
I hatted changeing my homepage all the time and various other things...

I also use Bullguard now...

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.