PAT,
I had a similar problem before. A good lesson was learned by my kids
about downloading stuff from web pages. It took me days to clean the
mess up.
The procedure that worked the best for me was using as many "free"
spyware removes as possible: Spybot search and destroy and others. I
needed three (don't remember the other two) before I got the mess
cleaned up. I don't know if this will work for you or not, but it is
worth a try.
Good Luck,
Bill
TELECOM Digest Editor <ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu> wrote in message
news:telecom0.0.1@telecom-digest.org:
> This is an appeal to any Windows Internet Explorer person in our
> readership who can help me:
> Wednesday night/Thursday morning someone stuck me with a virus and the
> end result was my Internet Explorer browser is gone. I cannot get the
> browser to come up at all; clicking on the icon makes it sit for a few
> seconds, then the screen flashes ONCE as though it was getting ready
> to deliver the browser, but no such luck. I have cleared out the virus
> but apparently a driver or two or a file is gone as well.
> Not only that but I cannot even get any pages which would come via
> that browser. Now my copy of Mozilla works just fine, its only that
> Internet Explorer 6.0 wont come up (or anything that depends on it,
> such as a link in email, etc.)
> Using Mozilla I went to a download site (supposedly 'free downloads')
> and paid for a password to download an entirely new copy of Internet
> Explorer 6.0 and Outlook Express. Downloaded it, but still nothing ...
> I am wondering if it is because my index page (I was using 'my yahoo'
> as my home or starting page) somehow got wiped out.
> The newly loaded thing produces the very same results: click on the
> icon, it goes away for a couple seconds, comes back flashing once then
> goes away.
> Can you tell me WHERE to install a new 'index' page ('Documents and
> Settings/Administrator/something? so I can try that method to clear
> this up? Or got any other ideas? And where would I go to make mail
> and all the other links default to mozilla rather than IE?
> Microsoft tech support cannot help me because I have an OEM serial
> number. So I am seeking tech support from the readership here. If
> someone will send me email who can help, I will supply that person
> with an 800 number to reach me at by phone so it will not cost them
> anything to call me, and I will be right at the affected computer to
> follow their instructions. Thanks very much!
> PAT
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The problem is now cured, and it was a
thing about running one Spybot thing after another. I had found out
earlier that all the facilities worked fine under a non-administrator
account called 'ptownson', so I thought why not run the Spy Bot and
AdAware and Grisoft AVG under that account also since all three of
those things are at least partially dependent on IE 6.0 to run
correctly anyway, which they were refusing to do under the admin
account. By running them over and over, getting to the point of
'found and cured X files; could not cure Y files since they are
locked, reboot and let (whoever) run first thing once again, while
those files are still unlocked, etc. It took some doing, but then
on one test of the results, presto, things were back to normal again.
PAT]
Bill Matern (wtm@ncomm.com)