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Ok, the other day I let my cousin use my computer. He was on for about 10 minutes and I asked if I could get on really quick to check movie times. Well I went to start up Internet Explorer and immediately noticed that the icon changed to the dark blue 'old version' IE icon. Well I didn't think this was a big deal until my cousin told me something popped up while he was on that said 'crack.exe' and he clicked ok. Well something in my IE files has definitely been added or replaced with something unsafe. Cookies and temporary internet files are no longer saved which is getting really annoying. Especially because I had this problem before and just fixed it. There are probably other problems I'm not aware of yet, too. No popups though, which is weird. I'm just really afraid that everytime I do something online, my information is being saved by this thing. I really need to get rid of this. So far I've tried Spyware Doctor, Ad-Aware and ewido security suite all in safe mode. I've also tried reinstalling Internet Explorer. Doesn't work. A couple times the icon has gone back to the original light blue icon for a few seconds but then returned to the dark blue one. Ewido found something called 'crack' or something in an Internet Explorer folder which is probably it but it returned. It also picked out a Java file that I recently installed. I don't really know what that's all about. I've checked Hijackthis to see if something was starting up that reinstalls it but there's nothing. I'll post a hijackthis log even though hijackthis really doesn't work anymore. Any help would be appreciated.
Oh and I know everyone is gonna say "use firefox". I would but I have so many problems with it. I can never find the plugins I need and all that.

- Using winxp SP1 you're running a big security risk.


- After updating windows and restarting your computer do an online virusscan using one or more of these links

• Bitdefender (IE)
• Kaspersky (IE)
• McAfee (IE)
• Panda (IE)
• Symantec (IE)
• Trend Micro (IE & FF)

- Download and install a firewall, since you don't seem to have one (the windows fireall doesn't offer any real protection). Or when you're in a network, behind a router, you don't need to. zonealarm


- After scanning, download HijackThis 1.99.1 and place the logfile

Hi there,

Also, I would recomend using FireFox (www.getfirefox.com), will save you lots of trouble later on as it's a much better browser then IE.

I've had the crack.exe put on my computer once already, look in your Add & REmove PRograms window and there should be a whole bunch of side search assistants and IE toolbars, remove them all and then do the steps btalman mentioned above and you should be good to go

Cheers

In your opinion.

Which one is better keeps being a big discusiion, though I can point out which one is safer take a look at
IE-leaks
FF-leaks
Both the severity of the vulnerabilities and the number of unpatched holes in IE is far greater comapred to FF

That's what I meant

Hey guys, I love the FF v. IE debate, but this is biginning to get off topic.