AboutCarolyn Meinel Expertise I cover Windows, Unix, TCP/IP and Ethernet security questions. I do not cover Mac, Palm Pilot, or other networking issues.
Experience Books by Carolyn Meinel: wrote a chapter for The Hacking of America book (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1567204600/happyhacker)
My article Code Red for the Web for Scientific American was reprinted in the book Best American Science Writing 2002 (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060936509/happyhacker). My book The Happy Hacker: A Guide to Mostly Harmless Hacking is now in 4th edition with a Japanese edition (see http://happyhacker.org/hhbook/).
Question I have "windows xp" and can not stop "automatic startup" of "antispywareshield 2.1" when clicking on "internet explorer." How can I sop it?"
Answer I am so sorry that you are one of the many people targeted by the criminal gang that is responsible for these antispywareshield attacks. Here's how to get rid of it.
First, hit ctrl-alt-del to bring up Task Manager. Click on the Processes tab and look for AntiSpywareShield.exe. Highlight it and click End Process.
Once that process is dead, you can then remove the files and Registry entries that make AntiSpywareShield start up whenever you open Internet Explorer. Here are all the files you need to remove:
Since their location varies depending upon your computer, your best bet for finding them is to use the search function in WIndows Explorer. Your setup of Windows Explorer might hide the part of the file name after the dot (the extension). To be able to see the extensions (for example .exe, .dll), in Windows Explorer click Tools --> Folder Options --> View and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types."
Finally you need to get rid of two entries in the Registry. To open the Registry, click Start --> Run --> type "regedit" into the box and hit enter. Then in the Registry click Edit --> Find to locate these entries:
You get rid of them by highlighting these names and clicking Edit --> Delete.
Once you've done all this, you may want to use a browser that doesn't allow itself to get infected by evil programs so easily. Firefox is one of the best, free from Mozilla.org. Another safe browser is Opera, free from Opera.com.
