Piano World Home Page Forums Restricted and Archives The Coffee Room Are there any computer wiz's out there?

Larry,

I think your biggest problem is due to cookies as some have stated. I bet if you searched for cookies.txt and looked in that file you'd see a cookie from doubleclick.net. The most prolific cookie monster on the internet. Deleting all cookies is a solution, but not the best. If you do, you'll lose any customization you may have set up on sites you visit but do not have to log onto.

Zone labs, http://zonelabs.com sells an excellent product called Ontrack Internet Clean-up. It lets you "protect" certain cookies so you can blindly erase any you may have acquired while surfing. It also provides internet temp folder and history clean-up as well.

The lavasoft program as someone mentioned is also very good (and I think it's free) but it doesn't clean up your temp folders, etc...

As an aside, I think everyone should have a firewall - particularly those with fixed IP addresses or "always on" connections or those who download shareware. A free, very good firewall, is available at the link above. The upgraded version provides some interesting features, but it doesn't provide any enhanced security.

Derick

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Derick ]

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Derick ]

Larry,

I just had another thought... Is it possible that one of your son's friends got a hold of the computer and thought it would be 'funny' if the porn page popped up? If so, there is a way to change the registry settings so that the homepage will always default to whatever has been preprogrammed.

I have my notes on how to fix this buried somewhere. Let me know if you want me to look for them.

Derick

Yes, I know how to reset the homepage on Internet Explorer. I've done that a thousand times. It simply resets it to the porn site when you turn the computer on again. I have a firewall, it's Zone Labs. It must have gotten passed it somehow. I've emptied the cache repeatedly, deleted the cookies repeatedly, emptied the temp files, everything I can think of. It doesn't show up in the startup list of things.

I do note that when I begin typing in "www.netscape" into the window where you set your homepage on IE that when you get to "www.N" once you type the "N" a whole list of pornsites pop up as I suppose potential sites for homepage settings. I cannot figure out how to eliminate all those URLS that come up in the homepage window. There apparently isn't a way to delete those, at least not one I can find.

I can delete the title of this hideous site everywhere I see it in my files, and it will let me close IE and reopen it and it will go to Netscape homepage just like I set it. But once I turn off the computer and then turn it back on, this thing reappears, along with all the temp files and cookies. All I can figure out is that it has somehow rewritten my windows files somewhere to imbed itself into my computer where I cannot get to it. Do you think deleting Internet Explorer and then downloading it again would get rid of it?

I can't even let my wife see this thing - she's going to accuse me of it, and I'll have to rat on her son.........

Larry,

I don't know if deleting IE, then reloading will do it since the browser and the OE are intertwined - and if the problem is with the registry, this certainly won't fix the problem.

It sounds to me like whatever is going on was intentionally caused by human intervention, and not the result of visiting one of 'those' sights.

If someone tinkered with the registry settings, you would be able to set the homepage for that session. But once you powered off/on, it would revert to the preprogrammed settings.

Again, if you want me to try and hunt down how you can reset the registry settings, I'll be happy to. Just let me know.

Derick

Larry, I ran a search of your problem on Google Groups (a great resource for any computer-related problem, by the way) and found the following tip. It worked for a guy with an identical problem to yours, so it's probably worth a shot. Here it is:

Some pages will download a program which keeps changing it back. Go to Start | Run and type:

msconfig

and press <Enter> or click OK. Go to the Startup tab.

See if you can identify any suspicious programs. If you can, uncheck it, If you can't, change the home page to what you want and then uncheck one and then reboot. Try IE. If the Web page changed, change it back and then try msconfig again, rechecking the last one and unchecking the next. Keep doing this until you find the culprit.

There is a clever little shareware program that can help stop your home page being changed; I haven't used it much but the reports I have received so far are positive:


http://download.cnet.com/downloads/...1005 9-101-8571968.bc.10059-100-8571968

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: wghornsby ]

This is starting to become fascinating. How can we get this porno site to stop defaulting? Hmmm....going to take a bit of research.

3 Things For Sure:

1. It almost never is a virus.
2. You never got hit by lightning.
3. It's almost always user error (the louder they protest, the more likely they did something - Windows Explorer provides a lovely tool to delete like a mad person).

Larry, hang on, help is on the way (from one of us)!!!!!!!!!!

whatever you do, make sure you don't ask your wife to turn on the laptop.

I'm sooooooooo glad I have a Mac!

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

Larry,

I found the file and will email it to you. As you probably know, fooling with the registry is dangerous. I'd use it as a last resort...

FWIW, there is a brilliant new browser called Opera. Not only is it free, it doesn't have the 'memory leak' that Netscape, and to a lesser extent, IE have. It also has less security holes. But the neatest thing is that instead of clicking next, back, forward, refresh, etc... you can do all these things with some quick, intuitive, mouse movements. There's even an Opera version for them Mac thingy's!
http://www.opera.com

Derick

[ February 19, 2002: Message edited by: Derick ]

Don't mess with the registry. Patience is a virtue.

but this does sound like a registry problem, does it not? if so, changing the registry is the only thing that will work.

if larry shouldn't mess with it himself, then he should call microsoft and talk to a tech who can lead him through the steps. microsoft will let anyone who owns their software have three free tech calls within a certain time period.

the number to call is: 425-635-7222.

or go to their website to make certain that is the right phone number for IE. i used that number for help with outlook. they were great, and walked me through the solution.

Larry--

Another possible solution just occurred to me though I would say Derick might be in a better position to see if it's feasible. I should add that I had done this several times in the past when I had some irksome problem but you have to be careful with this since the registry's involved.

You go to start, run, then type in "scanreg/restore". This will then take you to MS DOS. Now when you're there, it looks rather weird but anyway you select a date when you didn't have the problem, then click enter and reboot. This will have the effect of restoring the registry to a prior date when you didn't have the silly porn site on there.

Mark Mandell

Larry--

Something I just happened to think of might work for this. I have done it on a few occasions in the past when I wanted to return to a time when I didn't have a particular problem.

You go from start to run and type in "scanreg/restore". This takes you to MS DOS and once there, click on a previous date when you didn't have the problem. Then reboot the computer and it will bring you back to that date you clicked.

Mark Mandell

OK---update!!

I tried every single idea you guys suggested. Great ideas all.....but nothing worked (except I didn't get to try Mark's idea because I had already fixed it by the time I read it). Then I downloaded that little program from Cnet that WGHornsby told us about.

MAN!!

The *instant* I launched that puppy, it flashed a thing up on the screen that said something almost sinister like "Damaging code found!Alert!" or something like that - it happened so fast I didn't have time to read it. I clicked on the button that said "KILL" and it said "reboot your computer".....

So far so good! Problem solved! Whatever it was didn't show up *anywhere* you looked. There was absolutely nothing to give me a clue where or what it was. But it seems to be gone now, and my computer is even running faster.

Thanks guys! And thanks WG!

oops, sorry about that double message. Didn't think that the first one got through!

Mark

Hurray! Larry, glad to hear that your problem was fixed. As for me, memory has stopped disapearing off of my computer, but I'm still having problems with Scan Disk and Defrag. The virus protection program comes up with nothing. I did get my scan disk to run earlier today, but its back to not running again, and the defrag program is still not properly running. I'll disable everything that I can and try it again later.

jgoo: Since you're running Win 98, your problem won't be caused by Win ME's Restore function (which would cause the symptoms you've previously described). More than likely you have a program running in the background that's taking up gobs of memory, which causes Windows to swap out to virtual memory on the hard drive. This makes your Scandisk and Defrag programs reset in the middle of running. You can force Windows to use a statically sized swap file by right clicking on the "My Computer" icon either on the desktop or in Explorer, select "Properties," then the "Performance" tab, then the "Virtual Memory" button. Select the "Let me specify my own virtual memory settings" radio button, then set the value in the Minimum and Maximum boxes to the same number. General rule of thumb, the number should be 2x your installed RAM (in megabytes), up to 256. For instance, if you have 64MB of RAM installed, set both values to 128; if you have 128MB installed, set them to 256; if you have 256MB installed, set them to 256. The exception to this rule is if you are manipulating large bitmap or audio files and need lots of memory, then you can use an arbitrarily large value, like 1024 (1 gigabyte).

Once you do this, select "Okay" and reboot your computer. You now should be able to run Scandisk and Defrag.

How did we get from pianos to computer?

Anyway, here is some good info for anyone that is interested.
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,84464,00.asp

Hi Larry,
Look like you have done all you could except one thing: format your hard drive, but you need to re install all programs ... That 's what I did several times to my computer when I got big problem. In addition, this is really last option.

Good Luck,

Sorry, that was my fault. I had a little computer problem and wanted an opinion. My problem seems to be fixed. Thanks all, for your advice.

killerbobjr: Thanks for your advice. I tried it, but since I didn't know what the heck I was doing and my computer was giving me all of these warning messages, I just left it alone.