Homepage hijacker removal

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patrickim1

Member
This little freeware really helped me get my homepage back after CoolWebSearch hijacked it.

My antivirus didn't find anything and it took me some time to understand what was going on..... :)

http://www.aumha.org/downloads/cwshredder.zip

There ought to be a law or something against the people/company that created CoolWebSearch and other stuff like it !
 
N

nipsirc

Member
How was it hijacked? How did it happen?

Give us a rundown.....

Also what does this program you linked actually do?

Thanks
 
P

patrickim1

Member
That's what I'm not 100% sure of...
I was seaching for something and i guess it was one of the searching sites (not google) that planted this trojan or spyware in my ie. :(
Next thing i know, my homepage changes and every attempt to change it fails. I have nav installed and it didn't stop it, so its not a virus.
I looked around a bit and found out that others had the same problem and that this little app can fix it... and it did.
:)
 
P

patrickim1

Member
ok. I've checked...

It stops the hijacker process and deletes that spyware app.
That way you can control your choise of a homepage again.
 
A

andrew3698

Member
The best precaution is to be extremely careful about websites that offer freebies.

Whether you succeed in eradicating the virulent program or not, may depend on the variant that infects your PC. One version may even disable anti-spyware like Ad-Aware and CWS-shredder. Trying to delete it the normal way only makes the rogue program replicates itself and you end up with more copies of the same in the Recycled bin or System folder if you are running older Windows OS.

NAV may remove the currently active copy but the problem appears again when you reboot the system because backed-up copies of the program are still in the system. The main culprits (the hidden .exe and .dll files) are still functional.

On older systems without firewalls, you may be able to root out the troublesome programs if you are comfortable handling MS_DOS and unhidden system files. This is delicate and risky and it's best to request the help of somebody who knows operating systems well, if the problem persists and the shredder seems to be powerless.
 
K

Karnac

Member
Nipsirc,

Here is a good site to explain CWS. This is a pain in the ass trojan, spyware, whatever you wish to call it and extremely difficult to remove with regular spyware removal tools. It takes over your browser, changes your homepage, installs it's own search engine and is a general nuisance. I tried NAV 2003, AdAware, and Spybot and none of them completely removed this malware. It can really slow down a machine.As Patrickim1 said CWShredder was the only tool capable of completely removing it. Beware of game downloads, Kazaa downloads,etc.
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/cws/

:devil:
 
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