My wife has visited some site and now everytime she opens ME instead of the Yahoo home page coming up, she now has an ‘add on’ home page that comes with it. I have tried everything I know of to fix it–so I thought I would turn to all you good Dopers out there to see if someone has a fix for this.
I have deleted the ao.lop part and then ran the whole computer through AdAware and Spybot Search–they always find this in the registry and delete it. I have no idea what causes this–is this a virus or some odd cookie that I can’t get rid of?
Then I reboot the computer and things are fine for the initial reboot. But then all other reboots after that the line is added back in.
So my question is—how do I get rid of this? I want to open the page to Yahoo home page only.
any help would be appreciated!
Thanks Joey G
that link was very helpful. I did a complete virus scan and nothing there. I then did you regedit routine and the msconfig routine. Nothing changed when I opened IE.
So I figured that maybe the virus scan had fixed it. So on a whim I ran the Spybot program again and there it was at the top–ao.lop had made a change in the registry.
So I cleaned it out–and will go through the whole deal again. Must have missed something the first time.
But I think I am on the right track–makes sense it has to be something in the startup routine–since that is when it reappears.
I will retry this tomorrow
Just wanted to thank you for your advice–I do think this is the correct way to get this fixed–but I will see what happens on the next couple of reboots and see if it reappears. I can relate to alice_in_wonderland in that other link!
No problem. One thing to remember is a modern virus can disable your antivirus program, so you may want to give that online scanner a try, just to be safe.
Also, if you like, you can post the items listed in msconfig under the startup tab like Alice did so we can see if there is anything suspicious in there.
Another way I always get rid of this “lop” thing (gotten it maybe 3 times) is to just use the “System Restore” capabilites of ME and XP. Works every time.
Lop is not a virus, and although IMHO it should be considered one, it will generally not be detected by any antivirus program. It is a nasty, pernicious brand of malware/spyware. Get a program called “Spybot Search and Destroy” here. Or “Ad-Aware” here. Ad-Aware used to be the king, but while supposedly working on the 6.0 version of their software, they haven’t updated their current version since September, while Spybot is up-to-date (plus it has some really neat features I like). Either of these should find it and remove it for you.
One of the nasty things about Lop.com is that it installs a BHO (Browser Helper Object) that you really can’t get rid of unless you remove a couple of .dll files and out-of-the way registry entries, and if you don’t get rid of ALL of lop, it will just keep “restoring” itself.
thanks critter42–but I have run it several times through both Spybot and AdAware—even went to the site and reloaded them to make sure I have the latest. In both programs it identifies it and I delete it.
I reboot and it appears gone. Just to be safe I run it through both programs again–lop reappears! I delete it again and reboot.
This time things seem fine—then I reboot again—and tada! The lovely lop is back again!!!
I had xupiter a few weeks ago-that is the reason I got both these programs-and it worked on that hijacker—but so far it hasn’t worked on lop yet.
I will try Joey G approach again and see if I have any better luck today–man this is frustrating! I can’t believe these types of things are considered viruses either–this has caused me more heartache than any computer virus has!
LOP says that you can uninstall all of their stuff using this program. Of course, their integrity is suspect in the first place. Might be worth trying.
If you are relatively inexperienced, you may not recognize the culprit when you see it in your registry or startup files.
Hey I think I have success finally–he says with much trepidation!
The odd part was that it wasn’t reinstalling on reboot–but after a couple of reboots which really had me confused.
I finally found a small program running in my toolbar! I uninstalled this and it hasn’t come back. I ran AdAware and Spybot and nothing is coming up–I rebooted half a dozen times and so far success.
Of course it is probably still lurking there somewhere! Wow what an irritating program! What is the purpose of such a thing–I would never go to that site—ever. Do they get some money somehow by it being on my webpage? Or do enough people innocently go in there and that is how they make their money?
Well thanks to all you guys who helped—now if I can keep my wife from that site—but then again she isn’t sure where this came from either!
