Unwanted search bar in Internet Explorer

Shane

Lately a new search bar has appeared when I launch internet explorer. Even if I untick it under toolbars it reappears each time! Also, whenever I launch it does not go directly to my home page, instead to the following: http://searchexe.com/passthrough/index.html?http://www.campus.ie/. Normally, my homepage is campus.ie. How can I fix this? And get it off my computer?

newgrange

Your browser has been hijacked by some scum of the earth.
Get progs such as SpyBot and AdAware and HijackThis - they will deal with it..

bus77

Get Adaware QUICK!! http://www.lavasoftusa.com/support/download/

Get Firebird QUICK!! http://www.mozilla.org/download.html

Dont ask any questions.

HURRY!!

Shane

What's with the urgency?

bus77

I DONT KNOW.

Shane

Right. I downloaded adaware and it found some 'recognised objects'. Even though they were deleted, the search bar is still on my internet explorer window and the homepage still goes to http://searchexe.com/passthrough/index.html?http://www.campus.ie/. I can't find firebird, just firefox and thunderbird. If I download one of these, will it go away?

MrPinK

Firefox is the new name for Firebird. It's a web browser that is superior to IE in almost every possible way. Among other things, it doesn't have the security holes that IE has so people won't be able to hijack your browser in future. Everyone should get it.

You should probably clean up your IE anyway. If you've already ran adware then you run Spybot-S&D next. Between the 2 of them, they usually get rid of all this sort of stuff.

mneylon

If you run adaware - delete all the muck. Reboot and run it again you should get rid of most of the crap. Some of it loads with IE, so you can't get rid of it until you have rebooted at least once.

swiss

Read this.

As other people have pointed out, a nasty piece of adware has decided to attach itself to Internet Explorer. It can be tricky enough to remove, but Adware and Spybot Search&Destroy should get rid of it. If it doesn't try another program called HijackThis! which IIRC is especially good against software that "hijacks" internet home pages etc.

I strongly recommend you start using anything but Internet Explorer. Recommendations are either Firefox or (what I'm using) Opera. Mozilla is another good browser, although it can get a little bloated if you don't use all it's features (such as an integrated irc client).

corkie

Originally posted by Shane
Right. I downloaded adaware and it found some 'recognised objects'. Even though they were deleted, the search bar is still on my internet explorer window and the homepage still goes to http://searchexe.com/passthrough/index.html?http://www.campus.ie/. I can't find firebird, just firefox and thunderbird. If I download one of these, will it go away?

Having a look at the source that is creating the chromeless window (the search bar) from the link you provided! You browser has been hijacked by the lop.com parsite.

Full instructions for removal can be found here: -

http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/lop.html

You could find other tools and info to prevent this hapening to you in the future here:
http://lists.gpick.com/pages/Spyware_Tools.htm


Interesting javascript alert in the code that creates the search bar:

[b]          alert("You're not supposed to see this.");[/b]