something invading Internet Explorer 6

[mcklsn]

Something has invaded my IE and sets the home page to something like "Icanfindit.com" or something like that. I reset it to what I want but the next time I come it's been put back to this page. It's very irritating. Does anyone know what this is and how to get rid of it? I've also had several porno sites put themselves in my favorites list. I immediately get rid of them, but I need some sort of protection against this happening at all. Any suggestions?
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Mcklsn

 

[FWPIII]

You may have adware,spyware or a hidden program installed. I would suggest emptying your cache, deleting cookies, run a adware/spyware checker like Adaware or Spybot, both free and together to a good job at uncovering spyware or malware. Make sure your anti virus is current and run a full scan just in case a virus is lurking. Running these programs should be a part of a regular pc maintenance. A firewall is recommended too/

 

[bcastner]

See faq608-4650

 

[mcklsn]

Thanks for these great replies. My only question at this point is this: when I run spybot (and probably when I run the others, too) it finds lots of stuff. I have no idea what it is or whether it is bad or good. Should I just assume that it is all bad and have it fix all of it? As you can tell, I'm a real novice here, but I am having real problems with my computer being invaded against my will, and I have young kids in the house that use it. Once again, any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks again,
Mcklsn

 

[linney]

An introduction to the analysis of a Hi-jackThis log file
faq760-4897

This might be handy for you (reproduced from a recent Langalist).

"ID 3,400+ Startup Items.

Fred, While trying to figure out what "DvzIncMsgr.exe" is, and why it chooses to shut down (popping up the "Apologies / Send Report to MS" window), I ran across this little Freeware utility. To quote from the website:

"Windows Startup Inspector is a Windows platform software that helps Windows user to manage Windows startup applications. On

http://www.windowsstartup.com,

there are more than 3,400 known programs in the database. Windows Startup Inspector can thus provide a consultative information on the programs that are running at your Windows startup process. Whether a program is necessary to the system, or is the program a spyware.""

http://www.windowsstartup.com/index.php

 

[dearingkr]

I've been using Spybot Search & Destroy on mine and clients computers for a long time now. Have never had a problem letting Spybot fix everything it finds.

MCSE CCNA CCDA

 

[mcklsn]

Thanks again! You're all a great help.
Mcklsn

 

[daveydoom]

Two more good programs that will help prevent this type of thing in the future are:

SpywareBlaster and SpywareGuard

You can check them out at

http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/downloads.html