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Jeff Strouse · Post by **Jeff Strouse** » 31 Jan 2004 2:45 pm

Latley something has taken over the "default" setting for my home page. I continually (atleast 2-3 times daily) have to go in and change the home page back to what I like it to be (which is the forum by the way):

Tools>Internet Options>Home page

It's being changed to a search engine home page and here is the address line: res://mshp.dll/index.html#22776

Funny thing, is that when I click "Use Default" for the home page in the Internet Options window, the above web page is what it defaults to. Somehow, something has taken over my defualt setting and I can't figure out how to stop it or delete it.

I've emailed that company several times but get no response. I guess they don't care that I don't like using them as my home page, but how can I get rid of whatever file keeps changing my home page to their page?

I've put in the forum as my choice, and clicked "apply" many times. But, something keeps reseting back to that other page.

THanks for any help! I wish I could send companies like that a virus for taking over people's computer. There should be a law against that.

Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox....

Help!!!!

Bill Moore · Post by **Bill Moore** » 31 Jan 2004 3:26 pm

Download the program "Spybot-Search and Destroy. Here: http://www.safer-networking.org/ It should get rid of the problem.

David Cobb · Post by **David Cobb** » 31 Jan 2004 4:04 pm

You've been hijacked.
Spybot is one way to remove the problem.
This link might be informative, if it will come up. www.cyberwalker.net/columns/oct02/241002.html

Tommy Mc · Post by **Tommy Mc** » 31 Jan 2004 7:07 pm

Jeff, whenever this type of thing happens, I always do a Google search, because you can bet plenty of others have encountered it. In this case, I simply entered the URL you listed. Not surprisingly, there were a multitude of results.
This link looks like they found the registry entry that is causing the problem. http://www.metaphilter.org/mephi/66
Delete it from your registry, and that should fix it.
Here is a more detailed instruction: http://www.annoyances.org/exec/forum/winxp/r1074446362 [This message was edited by Tommy Mc on 31 January 2004 at 07:15 PM.]

Jeff Strouse · Post by **Jeff Strouse** » 31 Jan 2004 8:09 pm

Thanks everyone...I did both (Spybot and deleting from the registry)so hopefully that will take care of it.

Jeff Strouse · Post by **Jeff Strouse** » 1 Feb 2004 6:03 pm

Rats!!!!

It's still in there. So, I removed Microsoft Java, and downloaded Sun Microsystems Java. However, the instructions say to delete the following:

The HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftJava VM registry subkey

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREMicrosoftInternet
ExplorerAdvancedOptionsJAVA_VM registry subkey (to remove the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) options)

How do I delete a registry subkey?

Jim Smith · Post by **Jim Smith** » 1 Feb 2004 8:20 pm

How do I delete a registry subkey?

Highlight it and hit delete, just like you do in Windows Explorer.

Jeff Strouse · Post by **Jeff Strouse** » 1 Feb 2004 8:41 pm

Jim -

Where is the registry located so I can look for the hot key files? I don't know even know what this is.

I went to START>SEARCH and typed in "HKEY", but no search results were found...

Thanks!

Tom Diemer · Post by **Tom Diemer** » 1 Feb 2004 8:54 pm

Jeff,

You need to run 'start button/run then Regedit and click ok.
You should be able to browse those HKLM keys and find that one ok. But be careful in there! You don't want to make an mistake in the registry.

Tom