Spyware (or something) made my browser stop working!

Factual Questions
1

I read through the spyware threads and I do intend to try some of those solutions, but first I need to deal with one that isn’t mentioned there–my browsers (both IE and Netscape 4.7) stopped working last night. I click on the icon, it chugs for a couple of minutes and nothing happens.

Here’s what I did (to the best of my memory, anyway):

  1. Realized I had some spyware running on my machine.
  2. Brought up Add/Remove Programs.
  3. Tried removing a couple of spyware programs (Virtual Bouncer and AdBuster (or Ad Blaster, or something like that)
  4. The machine started running really slowly.
  5. Rebooted machine.
  6. Notice spyware programs I’d deleted were back.
  7. Downloaded AdAware and ran it (I just ran Spybot a couple of days ago).
  8. Found way more stuff than I expected.
  9. Selected everything it found except the tracking cookies, and selected Quarantine.

At this point, I couldn’t get IE to work anymore. For awhile it came up and painted a partial window, but nothing came up.

  1. Rebooted machine. I had to do a hard reboot because I couldn’t get it to shut down.

No change.

  1. Tried restoring the quarantined files, figuring that maybe I accidentally zapped something IE needed.
  2. Rebooted again (normally this time).

Nothing. At this point I tested out several other applications and they work fine. Then I backed up all my important files to my iPod in case fixing this will require some kind of drastic action. I’m hoping it won’t, though. I’d hate to reinstall the operating system (Windows Me) since I don’t have the disk.

Any suggestions for what I can do to get my browsers working again?

2

Odd, I had the exact same thing happen to me today, including the shut-down problems. I don’t know if Windows Me has a safe mode or restore point, but I fixed it by restarting the computer in safe mode and did a restore point.

Good luck.

3

You need to fix your winsock.
Download to disk this, and run it on your “broken” machine.

4

I don’t think that’s the problem–forgot to mention that I can still access the Internet (my Yahoo chat thingy still pops up and connects just fine). It’s just the browsers. Thanks, though!

I’m going to try the safe mode/restore point suggestion when I get home tonight and see how that works. I’m hoping that will take care of the problem (at least the browser problem. Then I have all that spyware to deal with)…::sigh:: :frowning:

5

I’d still try the Winsock fix first. It’s painless, and worth a shot.
(Reboot after running the fix)

6

Reasons: 1 ,2 ,3 ,4.

:slight_smile:

7

Okay, you’ve convinced me! I’ll try that one first. As long as it can’t do any more harm (and it sounds like it can’t) it couldn’t hurt. :slight_smile:

8

Nope. It won’t do any harm. It’s quick, painless, and might even work! :smiley:

9

Update:

So I tried the winsock fix, and unfortunately it didn’t work.

Rebooted, had a heck of a time getting into safe mode, so tried the restore point in normal mode. That didn’t work either.

Rebooted again, managed to get into safe mode this time, tried the restore point from an earlier point…

Success! I have to reinstall a couple of programs, but this also seems to have handled the worst of my spyware problems.

So thank you, ryanbobo and Daizy, for the suggestions! :smiley: