to an incredibly annoying search site called Xupiter. It takes forever to load (and ignores my attempts to stop it midway), and is loaded with popups and popunders even after I go to a new site.
What’s going on? I know the kids visit bolt.com, but they swear they don’t say “yes!” to ANYthing. I assume they’re inadvertently setting it to a new homepage, but what to do?
I need to either protect my homepage of choice, or block that nasty site altogether…advice?
Thanks!
karol
Xupiter is nasty. Get Adaware or Spybot (both free) to remove this and other spy/ad/scumware.
Don’t be too hard on the kids. I once saw it get installed on a computer without anyone knowing how it happened. (Most surprising of all, the computer was shut off for three days, and less than a day after it was rebooted, Xupiter popped up.)
Go get Spybot and get rid of that sucker. Better yet, switch to Mozilla, because I’ve never seen it attack Mozilla.
Yeah, I’ve looked through the history and don’t see any indication that they’ve purposely loaded anything.
I reset my homepage yesterday and I’m STILL getting popups from it though.
I have Adaware, so I’ll run that. I tried to install Spybot the other day, but I have Gator still hidden somewhere on my computer, and it won’t let me install it.
So: Task #2: Find Gator and get rid of it as well. I HATE that thing.
Thanks, all…I’ll see what I can manage.
bodypoet, go to Tools | Internet Options | Security in IE, hit the Custom Options button for the Internet section and check through the ActiveX section at the start. Click Disable for the download-related ones at the very least. This should prevent other crap like this from getting onto your computer. Also, be sure to get the latest reference file from Adaware, so that it’s as up to date as possible when scanning your system.
Bodypoet: Run, don’t walk, to Spybot’s site or to download.com and get that installed.
http://download.com.com/3000-2144-10122137.html?tag=txt
What kind of error message did Gator give you when you tried to install Spybot?
I used to have Adaware 5.83 (I haven’t tried the 6.0 version) and it wouldn’t delete anything other than tracking cookies, so when I got stuck with the evil-home-page-changer I had to mess around with all kinds of fixit stuff, but now that I have Spybot, it takes out everything–registry entries, dll files, a clean sweep. Two days after I installed Spybot my daughter was surfing and clicked on something that installed an evil-home-page-changer, and Spybot got rid of it totally, “poof!”, without me having to go into the Tools file or anything. Adaware 5.83 never did that.
You can also go into Tools, Internet Options, Advanced, and unclick Enable Install On Demand, which slows them down somewhat.
Hi Bodypoet
Xupiter is indeed a roayl pain. along with the excellent advice already given, I’ll throw in this link.
Daizy
re: Gator.
No, no, no, I misspoke.
It’s not gator that stops my downloads, it’s…gozilla, I think. Some downloading thingy. It comes in at the very last step and refuses to download anything that stops popups.
So I guess I have to go find THAT, then d/l spybot.
Thanks, daizy, for the link…off to check it out.
I would also recommend RegCleaner and use this great program regularly. Cleans out all old entries in the registry painlessly and I have never had a problem. Used in conjuction with the above mentioned programs and your system will be free of a lot of spyware and the crap they leave behind. Link