Not on my computer but on a mates. Everytime he types in an address and hits enter or clicks on “go” Internet Explorer shows the entered page OK. But when it displays it, to the left of the address in the address bar is another address “http://*.com/cgi-bin/r.cgi?” where * is “prolivation” (sorry I’m really not sure what the mods would make of a porn URL being displayed but I’m putting this here because its a genuine problem my mate needs sorted) This address is even displayed alongside the home page under the “Tools, Internet Options, General” menu.
Is there anything other than the cookies and temporary files that can be deleted? I got him to run his anti-virus software anyway just incase. And he’s not too sure if he downloaded anything either. Any ideas short of formatting his hard drive?
Try running ad-aware:
www.lavasoftusa.com
That might fix this up. If not, ad-aware is nifty anyway. Another program to try if ad-aware doesn’t get it is spybot search and destroy:
http://security.kolla.de/
Run these and let us know what happens.
On my internet explorer there is nothing to the left of the address in the address bar! 
I have a similar, but perhaps not identical, problem.
When I click on a link on a page, it usually opens a new window with the correct site OK. But every once in a while, seemingly at random, what pops up in the new window is the url for an obnoxious site. (It used to be the page for the site itself. But it seems that the site itself has now been taken down - no surprise there - so what I get is an “Unable to find page” message.)
Probably related: When I go to Tools/Internet Options/Home Page, the “Default” home page listed is an obnoxious site - but not the same one that pops up. Entering a new default manually does no good - the same one comes back. How can I reset my default home page to what it should be?
I am running Ad-Aware, which seems to be unable to fix this problem. Also Pop-up Stopper.
This problem originally developed when I was using IE 5.5. I upgraded to 6.0 to see if that would fix it, but that did no good either.
The problem, chilluns, is in your noting that the site is shown as your home page. That means that some external site sent a command through to your computer to tell it to change your home page to the porn site. I believe there’s a patch available from Microsoft to prevent this; check out their website. (Note: worse things than this can get through if you don’t install the patch; it’s a rather notorious security loophole.)
Second, going to your Internet Options page, you’ll see three buttons below the hopepage listing: hitting blank will install a page from your own machine called “about: blank” that has absolutely nthing on it; hitting default should install whatever thje default page when you installed MSIE or bought your computer with MSIE on it was. You can also reset it to whatever you want as a hime page by typing the URL in manually.
Prolivation is well-documented spyware; I’m surprised Ad-Aware couldn’t clean it. Maybe you didn’t update the definitions.
In any case, there are manual removal instructions here. It does indicate that Spybot should clean it, though.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, but no, the site is not shown as my home page. I have Yahoo set as my home page - it appears in the first slot in the homepage listing, as “use current” - and this is the homepage that comes up whenever I launch IE from scratch. The other site only pops up when I click on a link within a page.
As I said the “default” home page (second slot) has been reset to a different obnoxious site. Setting my homepage to “default” brings up the second obnoxious site the next time I initiate IE - although it is now automatically blocked by security, because it tries to download an .exe file.
The thing seems to have changed the defaults that came with MSIE. This persisted even when I re-installed IE 6.0.
So does anyone have an answer for my problem?
-
It seems that the IE default page (the second “Homepage” slot on Tools/Internet Options/General) has been reset to the obnoxious site. Is there any way to manually reset the default?
-
Barring that, can I uninstall IE and do a clean re-install? IE 5.5. came installed on my computer, and Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs does not offer an option to uninstall it automatically. I am now running IE 6.0, but if I uninstall that it just reverts to IE 5.5.
Thanks Realitychuck and others, my mates was getting worried that his Dad might be checking his email soon, the price to pay for nekkid Russian women 
Colibri that sounds something like the original problem I described, this software changed the default Homepage too, try what’s been suggested.
You guys probably have some spyware/scumware. Do NOT uninstall/reinstall/disable IE, it won’t solve anything. And if it does, it’ll be a huge hassle.
Please go to www.lavasoftusa.com and download, install, update and run Ad-Aware. THEN go to http://security.kolla.de/ and download, install, update and run SpyBot.
Both of these programs are free.
The Crimson King said it in the very first reply.
What it sounds like is that you’re registry was edited with a very nasty javascript that was running in teh background of some pr0n site your bud visited.
The solution is neither easy nor advisable for the novice user. As such, I highly suggest that you install a new browser and deinstall IE.
Otherwise, just live with it. Clear you’re history, and delete the autocomplete forms… thats all i can recommend. It probably isnt spyware. If it actually altered Internet Explorer, like the Tools bar drop down window… it altered the registry. DO NOT CHANGE YOURE REGISTRY UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING.
You might want to try HijackThis from http://www.tomcoyote.org/hjt/
Careful, don’t delete anything that this program detects without checking with someone knowledgable first.
Learn how to properly futz with the registry. Do a lot of reading. And then find porn sites that don’t *** with your computer. They’re out there.
Or just pony up the $4 for a DVD.
I’ve run them both, and they haven’t worked.
:dubious: :rolleyes: 
Sounds to me like you have spyware hijacking your browser, which can be somewhat similar but not the same as hijacking a thread.
You might want to try the hijackthis program that cls posted the link to.
Finally, this one worked. It revealed 5 files with the name of the obnoxious site, so I felt fairly confident I could remove these. And now my “default” is set to about:blank.
Thanks to cls, and also to DiLLiGaF for the recommendation.