Expert: Lorry - 1/13/2008

Question
When I go to Internet explorer to open home page the 1st thing that pop's up is this ad called Perfect Lover Calculator. It's a program that sends text's to your cell phone. I dont have a cell. I've tried everything to get rid of it & NOTHING works lol. I even added it to my block list & that dont work. Can you give me some insight on what to do or where to look to get rid of this problem. Thank You for your time, Marvin.

Answer
Hi Marvin,

I would suggest downloading Spybot - Search & Destroy 1.4, a program that removes spyware, available from:

http://www.pcworld.com/downloads/file_description/0,fid,22262,00.asp

Check for updates before running. If you have trouble getting the updates, near the top of the Update Window, click the little arrow next See-Cure  #1(Europe), highlight the next one on the list, See-Cure #2 and try to download the updates. If that doesn't work, try the next one the list. until you get one you can download from. Being a free program, if too many people are using the same site to download the updates, some people will not get them.

After you remove the spyware, open Internet Explorer and reset your homepage. While IE is opened, I would also suggest going to the following site and run a free virus scan:

http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/default.asp?langid=ie&venid=sym

Click the GO button, then under Virus Detection, click Start. You might be told that you need to download and install ActiveX Controls for the scan to work, answer Yes.

Write down exactly anything it finds, then go to: http://www.symantec.com/search/  and do a search for what was found. Symantec usually has a removal tool and/or directions for removing manually. Make sure that you follow the instructions for removal, step by step, especially the part regarding disabling System Restore.

Hope this helps!
Lorry