Ukay computer problems here

[Iron Bonny Shades]

I tried accessing my computer this morning, and some spywear had decided to put a porn site as my home page.

No biggie, delete the file, clear the cookies and history and reset the account.

Now it won't let me open ie and says I have an error.

On my win 98...

Trend, has found no less then 8 viruses in the last 10 minutes which have been quarenteed.

I ran ie repair, spybo (had a lot of these), and cleaned the registry with some registry mechanic, and a quick scan disk.

It won't let me remove ie, but I can access outlook express.

I even tried doing a rebuild of ie, with no luck.

I've got a feeling I've got a format c: in my future,

[Rune Walsh]

I'd agree with your feeling there Eternity. Usually the best route to go, just back everything up beforehand. When you get it back up and running, not only get spybot back but also Ad-Aware (www.lavasoftusa.com) and UPDATE THE REFERENCE FILE. These two in conjunction should keep your computer decently clean of any spyware. As for the viruses I suggest a good hardware firewall or something Norton, or even AVG. All of the above should work fine. I don't even have an anti-virus and with the blockage I've got nothing has gotten in so far. The damn blaster worm had a tough time leaking it's way in and when it hit it was easy to take care of. Anyhow, yeah, good luck with that.

[Merkuri]

Yeah, it looks like your best chance would be to format your hard drive. If you had that 8 viruses there's a good chance that a 9th or 10th slipped past the antivirus software and will cause you grief until you find a way to get rid of it, and if you can't find it that means a reformat.

Before you format, make backups and gather the CDs of everything you'll want to reinstall (including Win 98). If you can't find a certain CD then you'll have to figure out if you can live without that program or find another way to reinstall it.

After you format, I recommend before anything else you install the following:

• Anti-virus software (I recommend Norton Antivirus)
  
• A firewall (I like ZoneAlarm)
  
• Anti-spyware software (Ad-Aware AND Spybot are a good combo, each finds what the other can miss)

And watch what you install on your computer after that. Turn on the auto-protect of your anti-virus and anti-spyware (if it has it). Scan everything with your anti-virus and anti-spyware software before you install. As a rule, anything that you see ads for and can download for free has to get money from somewhere, and usually it's selling your information or bombarding you with more ads. Things to watch out for: Gator, Bonzai Buddy, WeatherBug, AtomicClock. Be careful of installs that piggyback on other installs. Gator is known for this.

[Shadowdragon]

If you can manage to access the internet, you might try www.antivirus.com They have an online virus hunter. It had found something like 23 viruses still on my maching AFTER a SOPHOS Anti-Virus cleaning. Hence why I no longer open any e-mail from an addy I don't know.

[LadyWinterWolf]

Saw some new information of a virus attached to IE that is allowing backdoor access. Go to the microsoft site, and there should be information on how to remove it, and firewall it.