My Internet Explorer was broken by nasty new spyware

Jamez
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Joined: Sun 30 May, 2004 23.02
Location: Bristol

DJGM wrote:
Jamez wrote: I'm now using the Avant browser and really is the best thing since sliced bread!

Runs like a dream on my ageing PC! :lol:
Avant Browser - another "wraparound" browser GUI that uses the IE/Trident engine, which adds Mozilla
style functionality such as tabbed browsing, but is subject to all the exact same security pitfalls as IE.
But it's quicker, and has tons of features which I find very useful. Oh, and it doesn't gobble up RAM unlike shitty FireFux
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Pete
Posts: 7628
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.36
Location: Dundee

Firefox seems to be one of those odd little programs that runs fast on some people's machines and dead slow on others. Not sure why that is to be honest.

I'd recommend giving the next version a try when it (eventually) comes out though - 1.1 I mean (not all these 1.0.2 1.0.3 versions which are just patches).

On the subjects of wraparounds, I can't remember if this has been mentioned before on here but Internet Explorer doesn't actually use the windows GUI things itself.

Open a folder with lots of files (i.e. C:\Windows) and move your cursor right to the right of the screen and click, you should have grabbed hold of the scrollbar. Do the same in Internet Explorer and you'll notice this does not happen as it uses a different scrollbar it's generating itself. Also in Windows it lights up when you hover over it, not in IE.
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marksi
Posts: 1892
Joined: Wed 07 Jan, 2004 05.38
Location: Donaghadee

Well with thanks to AJA, who, strangely was having the same problem...

Find an internet explorer plug in (Tools, Manage Add-Ons) called req.dat. Disable it.

FIXED!

I have no idea what req.dat is, or why disabling it makes things work again, but there you go.
Andrew
Posts: 337
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 18.18

marksi wrote:Well with thanks to AJA, who, strangely was having the same problem...

Find an internet explorer plug in (Tools, Manage Add-Ons) called req.dat. Disable it.

FIXED!

I have no idea what req.dat is, or why disabling it makes things work again, but there you go.
I was also having the same problem, it only started doing it the other day and since then I've been pulling my hair out looking around the internet and finding solutions that never work, but thankfully, touch wood, this has solved it.

Same as you my PC is also new (4 months old) so I was quite annoyed that it had already started getting a bug
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Pete
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.36
Location: Dundee

I've disabled everything in my addons manager and yet there aer still links to Excel and "net transport" (like streambox for mms) in my right lick menu.

Does anyone else find MSN 7 only uses IE for links for those "Spaces"? It uses Firefox for all the other links though which I find a bit odd.
MarkN
Posts: 323
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 19.39
Location: South Wales

Hymagumba wrote:Does anyone else find MSN 7 only uses IE for links for those "Spaces"? It uses Firefox for all the other links though which I find a bit odd.
I suspect that a programmer has hard-coded a call to iexplore.exe instead of using the Windows API calls which execute your default browser.
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Pete
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 13.36
Location: Dundee

tut tut, I shall sob until the patch is issued.

It's less of a "how" and more of a "why". Taking into account they were forced to patch v6 to make it use the default browser instead of IE one would expect them to be more careful with things like this.
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marksi
Posts: 1892
Joined: Wed 07 Jan, 2004 05.38
Location: Donaghadee

Righty then, mystery solved.

The problem was caused by a new piece of Spyware, that Norton only became aware of in the last few days.

http://sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/adware.look2me.html

Norton was able to automatically remove most of it for me, but traces remained... if you have difficulty in removing the req.dat bit then download a little program called Pocket Killbox which will allow you to remove it.

http://www.downloads.subratam.org/KillBox.zip
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