Internet Explorer Question:How to change my start page ?

Factual Questions
1

Hi guys …

It’s my first post/question on straightdope … so I am quite excited !!

Ok here’s the problem…my start page opens up to “http://www.secret-crush.com/search/” every single time I restart my computer.

Here are the steps I have taken already to stop it from happening but to no avail…

  1. Tried the simplest way…i.e. Tools/Internet Options/Home Page. It resets back to the address mentioned above after every restart.

  2. Downloaded and Installed Ad-Aware(latest version) and did a scan…all sorts of things showed up e.g. Xupiter,Wurldmedia etc. but neither secret crush shit showed up nor any Internet Explorer shit…

  3. Went to registry and did a search on “crush” and whoa !! found a whole lot of shit in …u guessed it…Internet Explorer !!!
    Stuff like ‘Start Search’ and ‘Start Page’ keys etc. So I modified all of those to a blank string, closed registry,restarted computer and opened IE but it again opened to secret-crush.com.

Next I again did a search in registry for crush and this time I deleted those keys completely and repeated the process above but no success and finally I replaced the ‘Start Page’ key in the registry with “http://www.yahoo.com” but again after the restart it opened to secret-crush.com.

So as you can see…I am at my wits’ end on how to get that goddamned secret-crush out of my computer !! As far as I remember, there have been no attacks on my computer(Norton Internet Security is enabled) and also I haven’t downloaded any suspicious stuff over the last month and this problem has been there for over 3 weeks now.

Can someone please get me out of this mess ???

Thanks guys …

2

What operating system do you have? I think you have to turn of a setting that over-writes the registry upon startup. Meaning when you re-start, the offending program/virus is writing itself to the registry again, even though you “fixed” it. I don’t remember how to do this and if it can be done with all Windows OS’s, but perhaps if you tell us your OS someone can help you turn this setting off.

3

The OS is Windows ME … yeah wt u r saying could be true but wouldnt’d such a program/virus be detected in system scan and registry scan ???

4
5

My problem still remains unresolved. I installed IE-Spypad and merged it to my registry and surprisingly. Most of the values of keys seems to have been reset to either ‘0’ or “” and some keys have even disappeared altogether. I feel something drastically wrong has happened. And to top it all off, the damn IE still opens to secret-crush.com !!!

Isn’t there anyone who can possibly help me ???

I’m disappointed …