Hi all! I have a problem with a hijack. I went to a new client today to help her out with a slow comp, and when I went there I was amazed to see that she had absolutley NO protection at all. No firewall, AV, spybot, etc. I installed AVG first, then I installed ZA. I updated and ran AVG. AVG found 117 viruses!! I went to install spybot and out of no where her homepage was changed from her Netscape to something called "Safe Search." All it consisted of was a search bar. I tried everything to get rid of it and nothing worked. She has had her comp since 1997 and never had any protection! I was floored! I couldn't get on the internet at all to get a hold of spybot, adaware and trojan remover. It kept changing everything I typed in the URL to "Safe Search." Can someone please tell me what to do?? I spent all afternoon there trying to rid her comp of this. Thanks to anyone that can help. --Viv :) P.S. Her O/S is ME.

Hi Viv; just a quick thought..did you try to scan in safe mode? Really guessing here on my part, as I'm far from knowledgable on this subject. Hope this might help a little. Good luck, Viv. ~Tommyo

These links should help ya out... http://www.pestpatrol.com/PestInfo/s/safesearch.asp http://sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/adware.safesearch.html http://www.spyany.com/program/article_spw_rm_SafeSearch.html

I keep updated copys of norton AV, spybot S&D adaware hijackthis and other tools on a CD, that way I don't need to conn. to Inet. Don't forget to disable System Restore on that ME OS. or system restore will reload those viruses back out of restore.

Hi everyone... First, I did try to do in safe mode and got no where. Let me tell you...this "Safe Search" hijack is nasty. Second, Rocketmech...it will not let me even get to anything online. I can't go to any sites cause it keeps bringing me to it's own site (which is only a search bar on the entire page). I tried just going into a few of my favorite sites to see if I could bypass it, and still no go. It has completely taken over her computer. Like I said, I was in the process of downloading AVG, then ZA (next, after I scanned with AVG),I did install ZA and configured it... then I was going to proceed to download all the others I mentioned above, and that's when it happened. Third, Paul...I did disable system restore after AVG found 115 viruses...then I rescanned with sys restore off and it found 2 more. I didn't have my copy of the programs on CD with me cause I did NOT think that I was going to run into all this mess! I thought I was just going to load all the necessary programs and scan, remove...etc. I have to go back there in the AM so I will bring it then. Thanks for all your advice...muchly appreciated. --Viv :) P.S. Anyone else have any ideas too??

Sorry, Viv , thought you'd figure to link to those sites from your working pc, then print the manual removal instructions . You should print out each one , since they are slightly different. Please read the instructions of each beforehand and apply the fixes as they match. After you get things fixed post back for info on prevention .

Hi there. Well, I finally did it. After many hours I was able to get around Safe Search and dl adaware, spybot, spywareblaster, trojan remover and stinger. One of them got rid of it as it was no longer in the registry. The home page returned to her Netscape and all is ok. When I originally scanned with AVG, it found 117 viruses...spybot 128...adaware 46...TR nothing...and stinger nothing. I reran them all and all was clean afterwards and Safe Search was zapped! What are some prevention measures?? Thanks Rocketmech. --Viv :) P.S. Is it possible that Netscape was behind all this?? I thought I heard someplace that Netscape has spyware...I could be wrong though.