Hi David,

All this stuff sounds good, but it's over my head. I don't know what HOSTS entries are. I don't know how to use Regit. I don't know how to get into my browser cache (I'm using FoxFire).

I'm a fast learner, but can you point me to places where I can learn this stuff?


>Bill,
>
>Are you sure you are really getting rid of it? If it's coming from a specific website the first thing to do is put in a HOSTS entry that will stop your computer from even seeing that website anymore. For example gator was one of the first things I stopped:
>
>

>127.0.0.1 www.gator.com
>

>
>This basically tells the computer that www.gator.com resolves to your own machine and thus won't try to get it from the internet.
>
>You can look through your browser cache and sort by LastAccessed and/or URL to find the sites you want to block entirely.
>
>In IE use Tools/Manage Add-Ons and disable anything you don't explicitly want.
>
>Look in your StartUp to make sure nothing is set to run there you don't want.
>
>Use RegEdit to make sure crud isn't attached to:
>HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
>HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce
>HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnceEx
>
>Look for newly created folders in your Program Files and Windows Directories. If you find a bad EXE in there delete it, if you can't delete it rename the directory so that the launching code can't find itself the next time you boot.
>
>As you prune the folders and registry keys do a FIND in regedit for unique parts of the name to make sure you get it every place.
>
>Use taskman to terminate the executeables. A lot of them have started relaunching themselves on shutdown so you may not be able to kill them completely. The above renames help in tis regard.
>
>>In the last few weeks my spyware finders (spybot, ad-aware, and Earthlink's spyware blocker) keep finding the same spyware on my computer every day. I keep removing them, but the next day they're back.
>>
>>Can someone point me to a place where I can learn about how spyware is getting onto my computer, so maybe I can catch it, or at least learn what I'm doing that's bringing it back so I can quit doing it.