Something is hijacking my favorites

[Wombat]

Here's the deal.

Office PC, Sony Vaio 2.4, Win XP Pro.

I guess when I was not around someone visited a porn site. Now some of my sites listed in the Favorites pulldown menu go to porn sites, even though it says the correct address in the favorites menu. I have even tried cold writing the address into the address bar, but it still goes to a porn site. Put it this way, the favorite says downloads and is linked to downloads.com (Cnet), but it goes to something called BBc......... a porn site.

What could have done this, and how can I get rid of it?

Paul

first thing run adware or spybot and see if that finds anything

[Wombat]

Thanks GroundZero3


Done that, and ran norton AV. Still no good.

Next please...

Paul

[phlatline]

Mayb this will help;
www.mvps.org/inetexplorer/darnit.htm
B sure 2 scroll 2 the bottom. I think u'll find something useful.
Phlatline

[Wombat]

Thanks phlatline,

This one is definatly worth a read and a bookmark. Don't you hate these things?

Paul

phlatline, the link demands a capital D in Darnit.
ie http://www.mvps.org/inetexplorer/Darnit.htm
Nice informative link, though.

Cheers
Mick

[pawprint]

start>>control panel> add/remove programs
check to see if any suspicious software has been downloaded and installed without your knowledge
cheers, ~pawprint~

[muno]

It's possible to reroute calls for a specific site to some other site by adding some lines in ->
c:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

-M

[A.K.Arkane]

hmm.. maybe its the program called hijack..Lol

[Wombat]

Very Good A.K, glad to see your brain is firing on all cylinders.

But amazingly, it was fixed by running a program called "HijackThis". These malicious files were rampant throughout the system. It's well worth everyone checking their system to see what they have..


Thanks pawprint for the response, that was among the first things that I did.

Mucho thanks to Phlatline, You hit the nail on the head..


Paul