Desktop hijacker...

[Guest Game of Chance]

I've run my AVG anti-virus scan, Ad-Aware, Yahoo Anti-Spy, and Adaware Away...and I can not get rid of it. It seems to be a Trojan...I'd hate to reformat again.

Is this my only option??

[Shade Everdark]

Other people here are more knowledgeable about spyware/hijacker removal than I am, but I'd give Spybot-Search & Destroy, then HijackThis! a try. Spybot is one of my frontline tools after Ad-Aware. HijackThis! is a very low-level tool that will allow you to do bad things to your machine if you aren't careful.

See if you can get The Dark's input, he's the first active poster that comes to mind, for this sort of thing.

[ZhukovCodeslinger]

I had one at work in a shared workstation that was hidden in the tool bar... had to go into control pannel and remove program. Since it was hiding in the tool bar, the anti-spy crap was not looking for it there....

Some old bat downloaded it as part of a new super cute kitty wall paper.... so i screamed at her "Dont download cute stuff you stupid old bitch"

she hasn't done it since <smile>

[Head Wreck]

heh heh.

i would have put it more eloquently, something about customisation of property not of ones ownership is vandalism etc. and scared the crap out of her doing the malcom mcdonnal sadistic, highly intelligent and whitty evil bastard

[SomeDanGuy]

Maybe try a couple other antivirus things too, such as Panda ActiveScan (this takes for-ass-ever to finish)

You could also see if you can find the name of the process that is running and maybe manually delete it. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and look at the Processes tab and see if there's anything out of ordinary there.

Also check what's set to run on start up. Start -> Run... then type in msconfig and hit Enter. Go to the Startup tab and see which things are checked to start.

........I have XP Pro. I guess there could be differences with some other operating systems.

[Scary Guy]

Doesn't matter what OS you run. All spyware programs now pretty much do the same thing if they're programmers know what they're doing.

Basically if you close the program it restarts it'self. If you delete the regestry entry it puts it back in. Etc...

There are only two good ways I know of to get rid of the really crafty ones (three if you're lucky). The first is a total format of the system. The second is taking out the hard drive and getting rid of those "entries" with another computer removing the exe files. Then plug it back in and if the regestry files are pointing to nothing then there is nothing to start and you can just remove them. Third option is to try a spyware removal program that will just stop it in its tracks and the only one I know of that will do that has to have direct access to the operating system, and who makes the operating system? Exactly... http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/s...re/default.mspx

Try that, if that doesn't work I'll be happy to fix it for a modest fee.

[Guest Game of Chance]

I just reformatted. I was trying to avoid it...cause I just did it like a month ago. I forgot to reinstall winpatrol when I did. Should be good to go now.

Thanks for the help.

[The_Dark]

Sorry, ben on vacation not thinking about this kinda thing... Next time.. if ther is one, give me a bit more detail and I can most likely help you clean the system up.

[Guest Game of Chance]

Sorry, ben on vacation not thinking about this kinda thing... Next time.. if ther is one, give me a bit more detail and I can most likely help you clean the system up.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks, will do.