# PLEEESE help me get IE to quit switching home pages!

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pleeese-help-me-get-ie-to-quit-switching-home-pages/146465>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 3, 2003, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pleeese-help-me-get-ie-to-quit-switching-home-pages/146465 "2003-01-03T19:14:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![sailor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a587f6/32.png) [@sailor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sailor)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 10:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pleeese-help-me-get-ie-to-quit-switching-home-pages/146465/61 "2003-01-21T22:09:18Z")

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MSinfo32.exe comes with windows and will tell you everything that is running. It is good to run it once in a while and see what’s running. You should know the prupose of every single thing running.

Most programs and peripherals install a lot of unneeded crap which you can disable.

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**Author:** ![alice\_in\_wonderland](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alice_in_wonderland/32/176_2.png) [@alice\_in\_wonderland](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alice_in_wonderland)\
**Post date:** [January 21, 2003, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pleeese-help-me-get-ie-to-quit-switching-home-pages/146465/62 "2003-01-21T22:17:56Z")

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??

Well, a thread brought to life.

Just to finish up (? - you guys can keep talking about this if you like, but I’m done)

I removed over 3,600 infected files from my computer, and now the problem is solved. I have no idea if the particular virus I had caused the problems, but getting rid of it seemed to solve it. So thanks for all the input. :)😃

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**Author:** ![Ennui](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ennui/32/3396_2.png) [@Ennui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ennui)\
**Post date:** [March 13, 2003, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pleeese-help-me-get-ie-to-quit-switching-home-pages/146465/63 "2003-03-13T16:03:44Z")

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I’m just bumping this to again thank **Joey G** and all others who helped in this thread. The other day I downloaded something from the Underdogs site and I should have known something was hanky when I had to disable Zonealarm in order to get the file. Well Xupider(sp?) and some smarmy “scratch off” game (and others)inflicted themselves on my system and I began experienceing many of the same problems that **alice\_in\_wonderland** described. I did a search and found this and other related threads and followed the advice, includeing downloading the greatly helpfull SpyBot program mentioned first by **tomndebb**. Now my system is clean and the barrage of popups has ceased.

Thanks again to all involved.

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