It seems a few of my grandsons decided they were going to download tool bars and things with out asking. So Naturally I went in control panel and removed them. Now i cant get on the internet, or AOL. also some how they dragged and dropped things from the start list all over the place.

Good that it was the old P4 with XP service pack 3.

My questuion is how can I get IE back short of either going back to a safe point or re installing from my MS disc. Ive got 8 work units that im afraid will be orphans:)

edit -And yes they will get a talking to. But thats why they only get to use the P4.

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Old James

I would run malwarebytes on the machine, download it from whereever you are at now burn it to disk, a thumb drive something and let her go. You probably had one of those tool bars that messed with your hosts file amongst other things.

C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\Etc\hosts

Open that file and make sure there is only has something like this in it:

# Copyright (c) 1993-2009 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
#	127.0.0.1       localhost
#	::1             localhost

If not delete any lines directing your to other website etc. Your best bet is to run a malware and virus scan and just make sure the machine is clean. I suggest malwarebytes and ClamAV both free and both work pretty good, you can even get a portable version of ClamAV that will run from a thumb drive.

Another thing to check is in your internet option either in IE or through control panel. Goto the connections tab and make sure nothing is there unless you have dialup. Then click on the "Lan Settings" button and make sure "Automatically detect settings" is checked and everything else is not checked and blank. Especially the proxy server bit, some of those toolbars like to put you through a proxy so they can feed you ads etc.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

thanks i will do that. it was toolbar called idvmu or something like that. last time they whacked up my old poor P4 was with limewire, what a mess that was.

edit- need to get some sleep. I tackle this in the morning.

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[/quote]

Old James

Msattler posted this over at Lunatics:

James Sotherden is posting in the NC about computer problems he is having since his grandkids messed with his computer.

System restore to a date before the grandkid attack might be a simple way for him to recover things......

Perhaps one of you could post this suggestion in his thread.

Claggy

Msattler posted this over at Lunatics:

James Sotherden is posting in the NC about computer problems he is having since his grandkids messed with his computer.

System restore to a date before the grandkid attack might be a simple way for him to recover things......

Perhaps one of you could post this suggestion in his thread.

Claggy

That was one of the things I was going to suggest but he says:

My questuion is how can I get IE back short of either going back to a safe point or re installing from my MS disc. Ive got 8 work units that im afraid will be orphans:)

Of course he could always backup his Boinc folder, restore to a point, then copy the folder back over and pick up where he left off.....

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Do a system restore from the recovery panel from just before all of this happened. As it will only affect the system settings, it should not affect anything else including data. So your BOINC data should be alright.

If your grandsons have their own signon accounts to the pc, you can restrict what they can and cannot do, including downloads.

Thanks for your suggestions. I was just worried that doing a reset might do something to the work units. Other than that theres nothing on that computer that im worried about. Thats why I let them use it.

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Old James

Id like to thank all who posted help ideas, and the PMs. What I just did is a restore date. Went back to April 28th and that did the trick. And I dint lose any work.

The program they downloaded was a add-on for bing. IDMU or something like that. It must have intertwined with IE so bad that when I uninstalled it it took IE and AOL with it.

Ran a virus scan and a malware scan every thing is ok.

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Old James

My grandkids are allowed to use only one of my computers. However they can do whatever they wish with it. I make a point of creating a restore point before they arrive and when they are gone I restore back to that point. Then as you did check with anti-virus the entire hard disk.

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Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

My grandkids are allowed to use only one of my computers. However they can do whatever they wish with it. I make a point of creating a restore point before they arrive and when they are gone I restore back to that point. Then as you did check with anti-virus the entire hard disk.

Geek@Play, Now that is a great idea. I have 7 grandkids aged from 6 to 14, And that would have saved me some angst. They can use 3 of my computers. my old p4, my wifes laptop and the intel mac. the first two have nothing on it that I would worry about but seti@ home. My mac asks for my password before they can do any downloads so thats safe.

Im slapping my head and saying, Why didnt I think of that.

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Old James

Maybe if that one machine they use isn't that important you could set them up with a boot to restore option. That way anything they do to the machine, once you reboot, gets set back the way it should be. Most of them will even allow for exceptions which means you can still run boinc on them and not lose anything when you reboot. But if you get something nasty on there, reboot the machine and you are back up and running just fine.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

in addition to running malware bytes. i would also suggest running rkill.com before running malware bytes. you can google rkill.com and download it. it kills all processes except those that windows needs to run, so any anti-spyware program is as effective as it can be. best of luck

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