RE: CoolWebSearch browser hijacker - Part II (WindowsUpdate not working) -- PCTECH

Neil,

I followed your advice... last night!  <g>

I noticed the same "5%" hang, and I just ended up uninstalling and
reinstalling it.  It works fine now.  And, actually, the hang occurred on
the 6.0 edition, which is the Pro version, isn't it?  On the reinstall, I
know I installed the Personal SE edition; it's like version 1.05 or
something?  Their versioning conventions remind me of IBM and Client Access
and, now, WDSCi - bleahhh.  I'm a little confused by what you're referring
to as "(AdAware ASE - not AdAware Personal)"; these are both free versions?
And ASE is a replacement for Personal?  I'll have to check out the site
again tonight.

Also, I logged into each account, starting with the admin account, in safe
mode, and ran the following sequences:
   CWShredder
   Spybot Search & Destroy
   AdAware full scan

I thought initially that doing these under the admin login would have fixed
the problems for all accounts, but the subsequent accounts each turned up
their own problems to be fixed.  What a ROYAL *PITA*.

These were the ONLY tasks I ran, and I was surprised that SpyBot S&D kept
reporting that there was a DHO Exploit.  It said it fixed it, but on a
subsequent scan, it showed up again.

I'm going to repeat the same process again tonight.  My optimistic
expectations are that these three scans will turn up nothing, excluding the
DHO Exploit I mentioned.  If that happens not to be the case, I'm just going
to tell the owners of the PC that their best bet is going to have to be to
do a scratch reload, and to stop downloading any old software like it's eye
candy.  That, and get a firewall router.

The benefit of having done this is that my son (whom I've mentioned before
in this list) has gotten a real education.  Hopefully, he'll think twice
before he downloads anything on his PC.  He's already learned that somewhat
with the WeatherBug download he installed on his PC.  (You may remember from
the beginning of this thread last month that he volunteered to fix the
problems that this PC has.)

Of course, this has been an education for me as well.  My previous, limited
experience with XP was strictly as a casual user, and on a single account
system.  After going through what I did last night, having to reboot into
safe mode five times, once for each user account, I'm going to have to give
a lot of consideration to my setup when that day comes that I bring XP into
my home.  A topic for a future email.

db

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pctech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx / Neil Palmer/DPS
> Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 11:21 AM
>
> Dan,
>
> Make sure you have the latest version of AdAware (AdAware ASE - not
> AdAware Personal).  AdAware Personal seems to have screwed up on a recent
> update, it updated the new signature file to 5% and then hangs, and after
> that it won't update anymore.  I've had to uninstall AdAware,
> download the
> new free version, and reinstall, on 3 of my friends home PC's in the last
> 2 weeks to get around that problem.
>
> ANYWAY - the key to getting rid of CWS is, run AdAware full scan with the
> PC in SAFE mode.
>
> ...Neil