CRAP!!!
Yah, so that didn’t work…
Never fear, my dear. A large government institution pays me a lot of money to troubleshoot things just like this. I’m doing this one for free because I have a weak spot for redheads in distress. 
Couple more questions:
If you open IE and set your home page to www.straightdope.com, will it stay that way until you reboot? If not…
Will it stay that away until you retart IE? Or…
Will it even stay that way if you just open a new browser window?
If it stays that way until you reboot, that would be a good thing, in terms of fixing it.
I don’t understand why it’s not ILLEGAL AS HELL for some company to do this- I mean, it’s not like you want it there, they’re controlling your system… sounds like hacking to me.
Plus, they need to burn in hell.
Have you been visiting certain websites?
Try tightening security in IE, particularly with regards to ActiveX and scripting. Set all to “prompt” if not “disable.”
Do NOT run any ActiveX scripts unless you are absolutely sure what it does, like Windows Update.
Hey Joey G, the home page will stay set until I power down and power up again.
I set it to Straight Dope and can open 10 new windows and they’re all Straight Dope. Power down, and BLAMMO! ahem.
Urban Ranger, at home, I don’t really visit many sites at all - Straight Dope, NeoPets, E-Bay, Snopes, Google. That’s about it.
Thing is, I visit all those sites from my office confuter as well, and there I have no problem.
<sob>
I didn’t see in your posts if you had run an up-to-date virus scanner. If you haven’t, do so first.
Okay, fun part starts now. Chances are that Kazaa installed something in one of your startup files that changes your home page upon bootup. Windows processes 5 files when you boot up. We need to isolate the one that has been modified by process of elimination, using msconfig.
First thing to do is go to start>run, and run msconfig. You will get the System Configuration Utility window. Under the “General” tab at the top, you should have three radio buttons, one each for Normal Startup, Diagnostic Startup, and Selective Startup. If anything other than Normal Startup is selected, stop, and hit cancel, we’re done.
If Normal Startup is selected, you are good to go. Change it from Normal Startup to Selective Startup. Uncheck all five items, hit OK, and reboot. It may ask for a password to logon to windows, just hit the X and close it (unless you have it set up to take a password, in that case enter it like you normally would). Your desktop will probably look funny.
After it’s done booting, open IE (you may not have internet access, no biggie) and set your start page to www.straightdope.com. Close IE, and reboot again.
After it gets done booting, open IE and see if your homepage is still www.straightdope.com.
If it ISN’T, run msconfig again, select Normal Startup, and reboot. There’s probably nothing else I can do to help.
If it IS, that means it’s been getting changed by one of the startup files that you disabled, so you just have to figure out which one.
To do that, run msconfig again, check the first item (Config.sys), and reboot. Check to see if www.straightdope.com is still your home page. If it is, run msconfig again, check the next item (autoexec.bat), reboot, check to see if www.straightdope.com is still your home page, and so on. One of those files that you re-enable in msconfig will cause IE to start messing up again.
Note which one it is, run msconfig, check Normal Startup, and come in here and tell us which one it was that did it.
Once we find out, we can clean it up.
DISCLAIMER: This isn’t nearly as risky as using regedit, but there is a tiny chance of breaking something. If you want to stop at any time, just run msconfig and set it back to normal startup. If you don’t wanna trust some guy on the internet, don’t do it. I wouldn’t blame you and I won’t be offended.
On this same subject, is there any way to get IE to not have a “home page”? I have Netscape set to launch with a blank window, since I don’t always want to start with the same one. And, when I pop open a new window, typically I’m heading somewhere besides where I am now- I don’t need that same page loaded again.
But IE refuses to accept no page or blank. Try and set it to nothing, and it does it’s little :about thing, which lets it load up some update or other “Buy M$” type site that I don’t need, don’t want, and would rather not waste the time loading.
Admiration to Joey G for (a) knowing that kind of stuff and (b) being willing and able to explain it so well.
I find jv16 power tools very good for finding and eliminating unwanted elements in the registry or elsewhere. Available from www.jv16.org .
Hey Doc,
If you want a blank page when you start ie, can you make a blank html document on your local hard drive and point to it as the start page?
Joey G,
If it wasn’t in the registry or start up folder, I was thinking it had to be in the config files. Of course knowing where it is and knowing how to explain to someone where it is and how to take it out, via text messages, well, you da man.
-Sandwriter
about:blank is exactly that - a blank page. The update you see sometimes is because IE checks for updates to itself automatically by going to an update page. Check Tools > Options > Advanced > Browsing for a checkbox labelled “Automatically Check For Updates”
If you’re having IE load to some MS page even without that and with about:blank, dunno what to tell you. Something else is affecting the behaviour of IE, because it simply doesn’t do that on it’s own.
I usually make a local startup page with all of my frequent links. It is easier. Besides, I hate hopepages. Giving even a non-unique page impression every time you open a browser (something I do thousands of times a month) is just silly.
Normal Startup wasn’t selected - Selected Startup was.
So I hit cancel and now we’re done?
Yes?
You have the solution?
Please, please?
Ok, I found it.
SysTray.exe has apparently been changed.
The confuter appears to be working with this option disabled - can I just leave it at that, or should I modify “SysTray.exe”?
Thanks!!!
When you say that systray.exe has been disabled, you mean that it is unchecked in the “startup” tab in msconfig? Is there anything else in the startup tab that’s unchecked?
If systray.exe is the only thing disabled in your “startup” tab, go ahead and run through those instructions I gave you earlier.
No, see I disabled (unchecked) “systray.exe” and now the problem is solved.
I just don’t know if I can just leave it like that, or if I should replace my systray.exe file with a clean one - I don’t actually know what it does ya see.
Oh, cool. Systray.exe is the program that puts the little icons next to your clock, in the taskbar. You should replace it with a clean copy. That’s odd, I didn’t think Kazaa would go that far. I expected a line in your win.ini or something.
Go to start>run and run sfc. Select the "Extract one file from installation disk " option, and type “systray.exe” in the text box. It should install a clean copy from your Windows .cab files or 98 disk.
Glad to hear you got it fixed.
Me too!!
Thank you so much for your help - this has been going on for months, and I was beginning to get a dent in my desk from banging my head so much…
However - any chance your description of systray is wonky? I’m only asking because the little icons beside my clock are still there.
Glad I could help (If I even did).
**
Yeah, it is a little wonky. It provides for the Microsoft systray icons, like the volume control, power meter, and so on. Other programs can put stuff there without systray running.
Ah. Well cool. You certainly did help - I managed to find the file that was screwy, but I sure couldn’t have got there without yer directions, so thanks. If you ever need any adivce on, um… bunnies or makeup, I’m yer gal. 