Tuesday, September 13, 2005

AZESearchbar

I just got something, guess what I got?! C'mon 3 guesses, you'll NEVER guess what I just got! C'mon try!
I just got my very own complimentary copy of the AZESearchbar!

Yeah this is not a good thing, I don't know where it came from all I know is, I opened a window and there it was - and it hijacked my homepage and changed it to something that was, well let's just say explicit. And I changed my homepage back, but it gives me pop-ups, and pop-unders, all of which have pictures of things "popping up" if you catch my drift. And all that will, of course happen when the kids are looking, THEN my computer will freeze, so those images are now most likely emblazoned on the retinas of my children and they'll no doubt be scarred for life.

The best part is, I have eTrust Firewall, eTrust realtime antivirus, Adaware, and Spybot Search and Destroy. Not only did the firewall let it in, none of the rest detect this AZEsearchbar when I scan! I have to manually remove the fucker, file by file, registry key by registry key, and there are about 10,000 things I need to remove. OK, I can do that, I did that, except for the files (what exactly is an .ocx file anyway?) that say they can't be deleted.

Yeah, total pain in the ass, and after all that, I still have the bastard.

For the record, it isn't a virus, a trojan, or a worm, it's adware - it isn't going to get you through my emails, my instant messages or anything like that so relax, OK? sheesh. Anyway, I did all I can do, so I guess Scott'll have to fix it tomorrow evening.


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14 comments:

  1. How did you get it in the first place? What are the warning signs, so we can avoid it?

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  2. Hi Bora!
    I'm assuming it was done while one of my kids was online - they love to go to those game sites that give hints and cheats for their video games and those places are famous for this kind of thing.

    If there IS a warning sign, I didn't see it, all I know is I opened a window and my google toolbar had been replaced by the AZESearchbar, and my homepage was NOT Yahoo anymore.

    I've done some online research on it, and there are seriously hundreds of associated files and folders, and it's a real booger to completely remove all the files!

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  3. Zone Alarm and SpyWare Doctor. Zone Alarm is wonderful and Spyware Dr gets things that adaware lets through. Try those hun. I've been missing you!

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  4. For that file you can't delete...kill it off in DOS. Exit to DOS, changed directory and type in the entire path of the directory...cd\windows\system32...and do an erase filename.*. I always like to do a DIR filename.* first, just to make sure nothing else will get in the way.

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  5. Short for OLE Control Extension, an independent program module that can be accessed by other programs in a Windows environment. OCX controls end with a .ocx extension. OCX controls represent Microsoft's second generation of control architecture, the first being VBX controls written in Visual Basic.

    Both VBX and OCX controls have now been superseded by ActiveX controls. However, ActiveX is backward compatible with OCX controls, which means that ActiveX containers, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, can execute OCX components.

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  6. nuh uh, I'm makin' Scott do it :)

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  7. Anonymous8:59 PM

    Good thing your said that at the end 'cause I was like, 'oh my goodness, gotta get outta here, and fast, what if that hijacker passes to me?'

    Yikes. Sorry to hear that.

    I had something similar once, but managed to get rid of it after a lot of work. (I was about to write that I think .ocx has to do with ActiveX Control, but I see that smarter people than me are giving you much better info.)

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  8. OK, I have Spyware. My kids go and get game cheat stuff all the time. Is using Firefox as broswer of any help?

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  9. I don't think Firefox helps any, but I don't use it so I really don't know, and I got caught in the middle of stuff I couldn't quit in the middle of so I didn't even have a chance to let Scott get rid of it today! So I guess I'll get that freebie and see if it'll do the trick. Unfortunately, from all I've read about it, manual removal is the only real answer :|

    And my firewall normally stops EVERYTHING so one of the kids must have downloaded it, or at least clicked "allow" on the firewall popup thingy :|

    See if they use my pc again!

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  10. Firefox helps, much safer than IE but it doesn't allow a lot of games and you have to add plugins for some of them. The kids use it when browsing though. We use IE, Firefox, Opera and Netscape depending on the mood. Zone Alarm keeps them from being asked to click boxes and spyware dr cleans out anything that makes it through. I haven't had anything on my computer in ages and I vist all sorts of um questionable sites and all the kids use the computer also.
    Huggles Erin!

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  11. Magdala~
    I'm so happy to see you here when you are, and god knows I can always use "huggles" (what a cute word!)

    The old man used Firefox for a good while, and hated it lol - guess I'll stick to IE.

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  12. I stick to IE myself as well, I love the word huggles, it just sounds warm and fuzzy and makes me think of you :)
    Preoccupied with that damn elephat ya know? Although it seems to have improved in time for me to get sicker than I have been in years! Great, wonderful, fun.

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  13. My Spy-Bot, the firewall, and Symantec Anti-Virus are always on, always updated and I also run them manually every day for good measure! The kids are only allowed to use Firefox (IE icon is not even on the desktop any more so they would have to really dig to find it!!!). It works for the games they like to play. If it does not in the future - tough luck.

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  14. lol mine too Bora, my firewall and my anti-virus run constantly - they update daily (everytime I turn on my pc actually) and I scan manually every monday like my life depends on it. Unfortunately, from what I've been able to find out, this thing is integrated into a windows file or something or other (I'm no techie lol) but the page I was reading stated that it's designed to slip past your firewalls and live scans.

    I still haven't been able to get rid of it - and I've followed every direction I've gotten from everyone! I've downloaded 6 different ad scan programs - nothing has detected it yet, or removed it - but there it is, larger than life on my window.

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