re: Cannot remove "ABOUT BLANK" homepage
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 8:45 am
Windows 95 Annoyances Discussion Forum
Posted by David Dokmanovich
(1 messages posted)
The recipe for riding yourself of about:blank search hijacker is as follows.
There are two malicious .dll files on you computer. One is visible and can be easily
deleted. The other is HIDDEN. The hidden .dll regenerates the viewable .dll if it
is deleted or changed. The hidden file is the problem.
To rid your self of the hidden .dll, which is the core of the problem, do the following.
Download three free programs and install them.
1. Taskinfo
2. Killbox
3. CWSShredder
http://www.iarsn.com/taskinfo.html (trial version works for this)
http://download.broadbandmedic.com/VbStuff/KillBox.zip
http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html
Open Internet Explorer with the about:blank page.
Then open taskinfo program.
Look for “Internet Explorer” on the left side and highlight it.
On the right side, open the “Modules” tab.
You will see a list of .dll files.
Sort the files by Company.
You should see a few .dll files that don't belong to any company or don’t have any
description. In the list should be both the malicious secondary .dll that is generated
by the malicious core .dll AND the malicious core dll. Again, they should not have
any legitimate company name or description.
Run CWSShredder. It will delete the secondary .dll that is generated by the hidden
core .dll and all associated registry entries.
Run Killbox.
In the "Paste Full Path of File to Delete" box, copy and paste the following:
c:\windows\system32\(whatever your identified core filename is).dll
Note: One will not find the malicious core .dll if one searches for it using windows
explorer or the file search engine. It is hidden.
IMPORTANT: Click on the Action menu and choose "Delete on Reboot". On the next screen,
click on the File menu and choose "Add File". Then it should show up in the window.
If that's successful, choose the Action menu and select "Process and Reboot". You'll
be prompted to reboot, do so.
After reboot, use the Taskinfo program again to check to see if the identified malicious
.dlls are gone. Don’t forget to open Internet Explorer to do this.
Run CWSShredder again and/or updated ADWARE program to remove remaining garbage.
DONE!
On Wednesday, April 7, 2004 at 1:53 am, ken the spyware hater wrote:
>I had the same problem. Ad aware and spybot s&d did not fix it. What helped me was
>hijackthis. I found it at http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html
>You have to be careful when u use it because you could screw up legit programs.
>The problem is that Internet explorer has bho's or browser helper objects. On my
>pc (2000 pro) some of these were good like spybot, popup blocker, and something
to
>do with Norton. You have to read what each bho is before you check them.
>I guessed and got lucky. I checked the others (I think that there were 2) and my
>google search was good to go with no more about:blank. There are all sorts of other
>things to check, but I left those alone. You should look at the ones that begin
with
>bho. Good luck. I thought fer sure I was going to screw something up, but every
thing
>seems ok.
>
>
>
|
All messages in this thread [show all]
 |  |  | re: Cannot remove "ABOUT BLANK" homepage (David Dokmanovich: Wed, Apr 28, 2004, 8:45 am) |
| |
| |
Return to the Windows 95 Discussion Forum
|
|
