PLEEESE help me get IE to quit switching home pages!

Factual Questions
1

I installed Kazza. It was bad. I uninstalled Kazza. I no longer have Kazza.

However, at the time I installed it, my homepage started switching to fortunecity.com.

I switch it back to the Straight Dope. I power down, power up, and it’s back to fortunecity.

I’ve switched it the “Internet” portion of My Computer, I’ve switched it in IE. It does the same thing in Netscape.

I’ve run AdAware and removed everything.

Does anyone have ANY suggestions?

2

I don’t have any suggestions, but I have a similar problem. Earthlink keeps making earthlink.com my home page. Really annoying.

So I second the question.

3

suggestion 1: Do you have Windows XP or ME? Try going to a pre-kazza restore point (in XP it’s start -> programs -> accessories -> system tools -> system restore)

suggestion 2: See what SpyBot or any other ad blocker will do for you (here’s a lil’ list).

suggestion 3: Search your registry for fortunecity and delete the entries and/or entire keys. (Start -> run -> regedit) warning do this at your own risk

4

Try this: http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads/spg/

The only problem I have with it is that it seems to detect something every time I reboot, which means every reboot I have to tell it that, yes, I do want it to load.

5

There’s a detailed article from the same site regarding the whole homepage hijacking problem and how to fix it:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/hijacked/

6

Also try Ad Aware from LavaSoft. It might help you out.

7

AD-Aware does a really good job of finding cookies, but for the nasty little programs that keep lurking around and resetting options, it does not work as well as SpyBot - Search and Destroy.

8

Well - I did the SpyBot thing and it seems to have worked. I also deleted all files with “fortunecity” in them from my harddrive.

So far, so good - thanks.

Seems that SpyBot found stuff that Ad Aware missed.

9

CRAP - It just switched again (I opened a new browser window)

WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?!?!?

10

After you run a removal tool, you need to reboot before trying IE again. Reboot, run your removal tool (spybot or whatever), reboot again, and then try IE.

Also, you never did say what version of Windows and Internet Explorer you were running.

11

Thanks Joey G, but that IS what I did:

Ran the Tool
Rebooted
Re-Ran the Tool

The first time I opened IE, no problem, my homepage was as I specified. I opened a second window, and BLAMMO the home page was switched again.

I’m using Windows 98 and IE 6.

I’m going to start beating my head against my desk in a minute…

12

Have you tried going to your windows temp directory and manually deleting all of your cookies after a reboot?

13

Ok, I’ve done that - hopefully it will work.

I ran the tool again and it whiped out everything - all my remembered passwords on IE, cache, etc. etc.

14

Sorry, you didn’t say so I wanted to make sure.
**

Fine, just aim for the mouse pad, please. :wink:

If the spyware removal tools don’t work, you will probably have to use msconfig to clean boot the system and narrow down the problem. You may also have to edit the registry. I don’t know if you are comfortable with that.

15

Well, if I could find the damn files in the registry, I’d be happy to delete them - but I can’t find anything.

I’m sure all sorts of horrible things would happen if I start screwing around with the registry, but, well, actually probably not.

I’ve screwed around with it before and it was ok…

Usually I’m pretty good about fixing these stupid things - this one is just really persistant.

16

FWIW you cleared out your start up folder right?

17

Well, and here I thought you were having the same problem I am, namely IE takes me to a Microsoft search page for topics relating to “Internet Explorer”, even though that’s not the page listed as my home page under “Preferences”. Never changes the page in Preferences, just takes me to its own damn page regardless.

18

Okay, here is something to start with.

First, backup your registry. You can do this in 98 by going to start>run, and then typing scanregw. This make a backup in your windows/sysbackup folder. The filename will be something like rb005.cab.

run regedit, and look for the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel

See if a “homepage” dword value exists in that key.

Here are the possibilites (I have a hard time putting this part into words, bear with me):

  1. If you DON’T have that key, we will have to try something else.
  2. If you DO have that key, select the dword value and delete it. Exit regedit, reboot, and see if that solved the problem.

Now, if it does solve the problem, great!
If it doesn’t solve the problem, open regedit again and see if the key has reappeared on its own. If it has, that means there is probably a line in one of your startup files putting it there, and we will have some more tweaking to do.

Try this out and let us know how it works.

19

Ok - I’ve just snoopie snooped in regedit - I don’t have the key as listed - the closest I have is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Policies\Microsoft\SystemCertificates.

Sooo… There’s no “homepage” value listed at all, because there is no Internet Explorer sub directory.

:frowning:

20

I’ve just done some more snooping - the closest I have is:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERS\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer

but there’s no “homepage” value specified there anywhere either.

…thud…thud…thud…thud…