Smartsearch spyware/malware! Help!

Oh jeez…

Insidious bastard. I can handle being forced to have my homepage set to smartsearch.ws, but this parasite won’t let you use Spybot nor even Google ‘smartsearch’ to look for a cure (the programs crash). I found a page on it and the ‘cure’ is to change about 10 registry entries and delete about 20 files running in the background. Is there anything easier I can do?

-Tomcat

CWShredder should get rid of that for you.

Have you tried Spybot Search and Destroy? That’s a really good, free application and it gets rid of loads of stuff. I use it at work on all the machines I manage.

To make those work you still have to change the registries, or so the other websites say. I have Spybot Search and Destroy, but it closes the program 5 seconds after you open it. It is really sneaky!

-T

Try disconneting from internet (i.e unplug your network/phone cord) and booting into safe mode. Sometimes in safe mode you can run programs that spyware prevents you from running.

I assume you are using IE. You could try installing a different web browser - such as Opera. Opera isn’t made by microsoft and most of the worms only target microsoft software.