Tuesday, November 25, 2008, posted by Q6 at 10:03 AM
This morning I fell victim to one of countless Internet viruses (while searching for, of all things, theater tickets). And, of course, I had my browser's homepage hijacked, I had system tray icons setting off all kinds of bells and whistles . . . so I tried to fix it by searching for and deleting anything related to the virus.

As it turns out, those things wedge themselves into places pretty good. With a nod to all professional IT techs, there are a LOT of little spaces for viruses and their applications to hide.

A lot of the bulletin boards tell of people who dealt with the problem for eight hours with no result, some who are still dealing with the problem days later, and other who said "Screw this, I'm going to the Apple Store." Me, I was determined to kill this thing dead. So after failing to solve the problem with my limited search-and-destroy skills, I hunted down the proper removal tool, ran it in Safe Mode, cleaned the registry, and reset Internet Explorer 7. At that point I had everything but the homepage hijack taken care of, so I reinstalled Internet Explorer 7, reconfigured that, and tried again.

Success.

I didn't get in to work until about 10am, though. They think I was dealing with a "mild utility problem" at home. If they ask, play along--but the merit badge is MINE.

 
1 Comments:


At 10:35 AM, Anonymous Anonymous

Good for you, HandyMan! Proud is what I am!

Yet now I feel as if I were the cause...if not for those tickets...

Oh well!