lnong
2008-08-27, 23:15
I use Spybot and it almost always detects and removes all spyware and adware, but this time it failed.
Recently, I notice my Google search in IE7 (Vista Ultimate) slows down a lot and the search results are full of adware. For example, when I go to google.com and type in some text to search for, it takes a long time before the search results come up. And when the results come up, a lot of the links (although they show the correct title/name/info whatever) redirect to ad pages. I remember one of those being http://exact-ad or something. There are other ones too. It seems like there's some adware/spyware on my computer that is specifically targeting the IE browser and intercepts my search queries. It modifies the query results, so that the link text displays normally, but the link URL (shown in the status bar when the mouse hovers over the link) is for some ad page.
This happened before but Spybot was able to find it and remove. This time, it doesnt find anything so I dont know the type of spyware/adware thats causing it. I've updated Spybot and my ESET antivirus with all the latest definitions and did my scans but they found nothing. I also ran HijackThis but as far as I can tell, there's nothing malicious in the log.
Does anyone know which types of adware this may be and how to remove them? Thanks.
Recently, I notice my Google search in IE7 (Vista Ultimate) slows down a lot and the search results are full of adware. For example, when I go to google.com and type in some text to search for, it takes a long time before the search results come up. And when the results come up, a lot of the links (although they show the correct title/name/info whatever) redirect to ad pages. I remember one of those being http://exact-ad or something. There are other ones too. It seems like there's some adware/spyware on my computer that is specifically targeting the IE browser and intercepts my search queries. It modifies the query results, so that the link text displays normally, but the link URL (shown in the status bar when the mouse hovers over the link) is for some ad page.
This happened before but Spybot was able to find it and remove. This time, it doesnt find anything so I dont know the type of spyware/adware thats causing it. I've updated Spybot and my ESET antivirus with all the latest definitions and did my scans but they found nothing. I also ran HijackThis but as far as I can tell, there's nothing malicious in the log.
Does anyone know which types of adware this may be and how to remove them? Thanks.