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The seventh circle of spyware hell

A few months back, I logged on to the Internet to find that my start page had changed to www.searchinstantly.com. Eeeewww--even to write that still makes me feel sick. It was the beginning of a four-day nightmare, during which I hardly slept or ate as I was consumed with tracking this hijacker down and killing it!

AVG Anti-Virus and Ad-Aware didn't detect it, so in frustration I reinstalled Windows Me, which opened the floodgates of hell, as it installed Internet Explorer 5.0 (without any updates). I then tried to track down a solution, not realizing that without the updates or latest version of Internet Explorer I was a sitting duck for more viruses and spyware. About two hours later, my computer crashed. I rebooted, it crashed again, and so on. I had to then stare at that awful start page every time I logged on to the Internet.

I next downloaded Spybot, SpywareBlaster, WinPatrol, CCleaner, HijackThis, TweakNow RegCleaner, and AntiVir. I ran them all, but that stubborn start page was still there. HijackThis removed it, but it came back after I rebooted. I could change its name, but the spyware would change it back--just to spite me.

After many attempts, I managed to update Internet Explorer to stop any further viruses or hijackers. I unhid all my files and file extensions, disabled System Restore, went into safe mode, and ran every antispyware program I had. Finally, both AntiVir and Ad-Aware detected components they previously had not found. I deleted them all and went back into start-up mode, fingers crossed and in need of a shower. At long last, after four days of me staring at www.searchinstantly.com, it disappeared. I had killed the beast. Was it a virus, spyware, an infected registry key, or a hijacker? Due to my lack of sleep, I never took the time to read its details. I am just glad it has never returned.

On the plus side, I now know more about how a computer runs than I ever would have if it weren't for those four days of hell when I thought of nothing but www.searchinstantly.com. It still makes me sick to write it.

--Cory
Perth, Australia

That definitely ranks up there as one of the most heinous spyware stories we've ever heard--we're exhausted just from reading it. This particularly truculent browser hijacker made you jump though quite a number of hoops to kill it. Using multiple antispyware applications is a good idea, but sometimes you'll have to wait until the antispyware makers have had time to research newer spyware and update their products' definition files. In addition, it helps to have a program such as WinPatrol, which will let you stop browser hijackers before they burrow into your system. However, as you pointed out, sometimes a terrible spyware encounter actually turns out to be a PC-maintenance crash course in disguise. Nice work.

--Download.com editors

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