Desperately need techie help - some sort of problem with internet explorer means every link I click redirects to a porn site!!

[IlanaK]

This started a few weeks ago and nothing I do helps. I run current uptodate virus and firewall software (mcafee) as well as one that is supposed to stop all that other stuff whose name I can't remember.

My settings on internet explorer were not set especially high as I wanted ease of use. I think they were at medium. Now that are at high and block all cookies.

The problem is basically that if I run a google search (or other search engines too), and clink any link on it, it redirects to a porn site. The site varies each time and some has been extremely explicit and I have kids int he room! You then can't hit the back key to get out of it either.

It does not happen on my husband's log in on the same computer, only on mine. There don't seem to be any other problems on the computer or virus type things which makes me think it is something to do with internet explorer.

I have deleted all temporary internet files, cookies etc and no difference.

Does anyone have any idea what this is?????

I would uninstall IE and use Firefox instead

I h ave mcafee and also AEG and both are uptodate. I have my computer set of automatic updates from microsoft.

Do I have spybot? I think I may have downloaded it once - I will look.

If I uninstall IE, how do I get online to install firefox?

Thanks!

adaware is a very good program that gets rid of malware liek this

I would be careful about uninstalling IE, as some programs need it.

I have now run spybot and adaware (I had forgotten I had both) and neither has found anything.

Help!

Try Pandasoft Active scan IIRC you need to check the boxes asking it to fix problems rather than just find them.

If your on XP, try windows defender, from microsoft.com/downloads.

Hi, It sounds like you may have inadvertently installed a "browser helper object" that is intercepting what IE is doing. There's a write-up on those here . Unfortunately, they can be a pain to get rid of. Spybot Search and Destroy can find and get rid of most of them.

Regards,
Tech

Thanks for that Tech. It certainly sounds like exactly what I have. But I have run Spybot and it did not detect anything. Any ideas what I should do next?

Hi here is a link to Ad-Aware it is really useful and it is free just remember to check for updates on a regular basis.

Ok. Here is the update. I realised that I Had not updated either Adware or Spybot so I did that and reran both of them. Spybot found a scary amount of stuff which it got rid of. However, the browser hyjacker is still there. So if anyone has any idea at all of how to get rid of it I would be very grateful!

What did Ad-Adware find? Also what version of Internet explorer are you running? you may also have to set Spybot and ad-adware to run on start up and set ad-adware to do a full system scan.

Hope it works x

Personally, I'd also advise upgrading to Firefox, fewer nasry security issues.

www.firefox.com