Have any of you had any experience with a lop toolbar suddenly appearing on your browser? If so, do you know of a good removal tool to get rid of it?

Attached Link: http://security.kolla.de/

You might want to get Ad-aware 6 to. It is free and you will really speed up your internet surfing experience. I run them about once a week and it really helps. Both are really easy to use and one will get some the other won't. There is a lot of junk that sneek on to a putter out there.

Thanks Helen and keyze, but I already run Spybot and Ad-aware almost on a daily basis. Unfortunately this lop toolbar is not effected by either one of these programs. I think it installed itself when I installed Messenger on my computer. :-(

Attached Link: http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html

SWAMP Edited after I read your post...take Messenger off!!...your asking for trouble.

Message edited on: 08/03/2004 09:39

Hi Swamp...tryed HiJack This this morning, but the minute I get on the web with this bogus toolbar, it puts the crap back on again. I also deleted Messenger this morning, but too late, the damage is done. :-(

Have you tried rolling back to before you installed whatever is causing the problem?

Look around in the XP uninstall at add and remove. If there is one you don't know what it is, it is probably the culprit. If you have an uninstall program look around there to because it might hide from the add and remove. I use Your Uninstaller but there are a zillion.

Don't forget to clean all temp files to.

Attached Link: http://www.drivingwithdawn.com/archives/2003/03/c2lop_toolbar_is_hijacking_my_browser_and_computer.

I have installed the new version of Messenger at the end of last week and I've had no problem. In fact, I've had MSN Messenger since I have a computer and I never had any problem with it. But maybe you're not talking about MSN Messenger. France

From the bits I've read its installed with Messenger Plus if you leave the 'Install Sponsor links' box checked during installation.

Do a Google search for lop toolbar...lots of info about it. This is a very bad parasite and you are going to have to do manuel registry editing and file searching to completely get rid of it....(system restores and add/remove won't help here). Hate to say this,but you may want to think about a complete HD format,if your not up to editing the registry. Sorry,SWAMP

Upgrade to Firefox. ;)

What does lop stand for? Lots Of Pain ????

Yep, I've done searches on lop and as of yet found anything that will get rid of it. This is ridiculous. It seems to effect IE so I'm thinking of running Mozilla. Btw, how do you do a rollback?

Hope you're running XP. If so you'll find System Restore under Accessories/System Tools in the Start menu.

My kid's computer has got some sort of a toolbar installed too. AdAvare couldnt remove it. I don't think it's called LOP though, is it possible to show a screencap with it so you know what to look for? And... don't confuse Messenger with MSN Messenger. 2 very different things. the first is a "service" that allows network administrators (and lately malevolent spammers and the like) to display a message on your computer, the second is a instant messaging program. In general NEVER install any "bonus programs" that comes with free software like Messenger Plus. As far as I remember, Plus also wants to install Gator and similar malware.

Ooops the search box is on the left. :-)

Oooh that is the one that has infested my kid's computer too. How do you get rid of that?! I don't know if it's a coincidense or what, but that computer is now totally unable to connect to the internet... all settings are correct, the damn thing just can't connect. Would a system restore help?

That's what I'm trying to find out...how to get rid of it. So far nothing has worked.

From what I've read ernyoka, it sounds like they have a dialer on your computer. I'm just reading up on this stuff so don't know anything except what I've read so far.

Attached Link: http://www.doxdesk.com/parasite/lop.html

Attached Link: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/downloads.html

System Restore in XP won't work because System Restore won't roll back unless there is a change to the OS....you can try to Roll back and it will tell you "after it's restarted" that it couldn't roll back because there was no change to the OS.... this has ticked me off several times...I find it useless...

They may have a dialer but it won't work, I'm on cable. May be the reason why I can't connect of course. I just can't see it anywhere. Everything looks fine.

Gonna check out those 2 sites and see if some of it helps :o) Thanks so far! Dizzie.. it DOES work if you set a restore point at fixed intervals. lile once a week or once a month.. OR if you often install new proggies G

Message edited on: 08/03/2004 15:54

Okay, I downloaded a free program called Spy Sweep at webroot.com, ran it, rebooted and now no more toolbar!

I got rid of the toolbar with HijackThis :o) BUT.. the computer still can't get online. Apparently there's a dialer installed... at least there's a menu item called Solo Wallpapers (Icon is a smiling stick of dynamite.......) and the MouseOver tooltip says "dialer" The shortcuts points at my IExplorer.exe :o( A Google search revealed nothing about that program, only a few links in italian that were about wallpapers. I clicked on one of them, and sure enough I was plastered in programs that wanted to install themselves... Anybody heard of it?

I wish I could help. I'm currently trying to figure out why the "internet" button on my key board now opens THREE IE screens, all pointed to the same site. I wish a boiler for each problem on the people that do these things! Mike

lop.com Evil incarnate -- worse that gator, and that's hard. lop.com can be removed and blocked by SpyBotS&D, and Hijack this. However, it can only remove them on load, so you have to set it up to do the removal on a reboot -- after disabling the toolbar in your preferences for IE lop.com is actively working to do the same thing with Opera, NS, and Mozilla (Firefox). The dialer needs to be disabled in the connections tab of your internet options, first, and then again in your network connections. Deleting it will generally work provided registry changes haven't been made to restore it automatically.

Trekkie...are you saying it doesn't work cause I am restoring back to a System Checkpoint and I have to personnally make restore points for it to work because the System Chckpoints don't work unless the system has changed? (I have them listed everyday) The last 3 times I have tried to rollback it said it couldn't, etc...I may have been trying to restore back to a system checkpoint....geez, if I have to make the checkpoints myself then I may as well use GoBack...LOL

Attached Link: http://www.spywareinfo.com

Here's another tip that worked just now for me. Go to add and remove programs and look for a thing called "Window Searching" and uninstall. I had to go to safe mode to get it to uninstall. So far so good, but it might come back.

If you run msconfig at the dos prompt start:run then click on startup you can see what programs start when your computer starts, you can then click off any programs that shouldn`t be running. A lot of these types of programs are put into program files so you can look there for the company name or the program name and then delete the program, if you uninstall it there might be some other hidden program put on your computer. This works with windows xp and windows 98.

Attached Link: http://www.mozilla.org

There is NO mentioning of any dialers anywhere on my system other than the entry in the Start Menu. Nothing in my IE preferences, it is still ticked in the "do not attempt to dial up" or whatever it's called in english. The Network Connections show no trace of it either. Nothing just remotely by that name have been found in the regdat when I peered into it. Thing is, it's a apparently not there at all, yet the computer can't access ANY websites, even when it's hooked up on the network where the connection is live. It can see the other computers on the network, and I can see that computer from my own. It can see the server ok, the only thing it can't is to access the internet. The LOP toolbar seems to be gone for good, no trace of it. It doesn't matter if I try with Opera or Internet Explorer or Avant Browser - and it can't open a ftp connection from the ftp program either. I am totally stumped. I see no reason why it can't get online, but it can't. I saw a note at one of the pages regarding how to get rid of other toolbars (I think it was HotBar) that said that there was a bug in the removal tool that could cause the internet connection to be broken, and a fix was provided, that you should run BEFORE you used said tool. I have not used that tool, but I have manually removed bits and pieces of HotBar from the system, it MAY be the cause. I'm wondering if a rollback to something like 3 months ago when the machine was still mine and working GG would do it, but I haven't tried it - yet. Dizzie, I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I've never had any problems accessing a Restore Point when I've needed one - but then again it's only been 2 or 3 times at all, I may just have been lucky.

Oh and btw... is there any way you can get rid of the IE shortcut on the desktop. Part of the problem is that people often operate computers out of habit, and if you're used to clicking that big blue E, you'll do that rather than clicking a red O ...

Check out litepc.com, the home of XPlite. This is the successor to 98lite, and it lets you configure Win2k and XP to your liking. This version runs as a windows native app, so you don't have to do a reinstall to get all the benefit. It may be crude, but I would suggest getting this, and removing IE, Messenger, and Outlook completely, rebooting, then running something Norton Utilities WinDoctor and see what kind of crap is left regarding registry stubs. This has exposed them in the past, and you can delete them there and be done with it (XPlite also lets you turn off file protection, which lets you delete system files, and the bloody caches where the restore files hide, so you can get rid of something permanently). Do backups of things like address lists before, obviously, and once the system is clean, you can use XPlite to reinstall features. Oh, and don't be afraid to play around a bit. You might be surprised at just how well XP runs without IE and Outlook....never mind the fact that you can ignore 98.9% of the security patches M$ throws out. And all you need to do is find the IE registry key at the top of the stack, copy it to the desktop, and reinstall it after removing the nasty thing; that is the key that all those proggy installers look for that swear you -have- to have IE for them to even work. Guess what..... They Lied..... ;) Even now, the most you tend to lose is the html help files. Can't say that about Office, as it uses IE as a display front end. But most of the other stuff that does will default down to windows standard interfacing if they can't find that stinking browser. And work just fine (you can also remove the dancing puppy dogs and paper clips, and free up some resources in the process. Worth the small fee for that alone. And if Shane Brooks manages to code a non-Active Desktop to replace the beanie baby....XP might qualify as a real OS, not an 'entertainment Utility') Actually, there's some 130+ 'features' you can yank out by the short and curlies, including Media Player and all it's problems...

is there any way you can get rid of the IE shortcut on the desktop. XP: right click on the desktop. select "properties" goto the "desktop" tab select "customize desktop" button on the "general" tab in the "Desktop icons" box on top uncheck "internet explorer"

We MAC OSX users dont have these problems :-)

We MAC OSX users dont have these problems :-) yet.

Dale B Uhm... L I LIKE Media Player... and no thanks, I won't be without my OE either. As for web browser I do not ise IE even now so that won't be a miss. And I don't use Office.. oh except for Star Office... ;o) That unfortunately does not solve my immediate problem. :o) Thanks Tyger Purr I'll try that :o)

wolf395: >>We MAC OSX users dont have these problems :-) << That's only envy! You also don't have the fun!! ;-) Willy

"That's only envy! You also don't have the fun!!" Define "fun" I have alot of fun editing my animation footage in Final Cut pro and rendering cool effects/3d animation in my OSX seat of lightwave3D 7.5 and Cinema4DXL8.2 and doing post effects My OSX Seat of Combustion-2 from Discreet and Adobe after effects production bundle. and im looking forward to the release of MAYA unlimited for MAC OSX and im very thankful that i was spared the "fun" of the disasterous initial PEE CEE release of poser5 :-) and I Iove doing lipsych animations in My OSX seat of Mimic for poser5 BTW I do also own a PEE CEE running the mighty and veneral WindowsNT4 sp6 so if i did ever want to run the "tailor" or some other windows only poser utitlity im covered. Oh!!! and as far as "gaming" is concerned... well im not much of a gamer but if i was........ id be using XBOX or PS-2. trust me dude im having plenty of "fun" :-)

Nice try on the PC/Mac flamewar :) Pathetic, but worth a go eh?

I use both platforms so i dont need no stinkin platform war :-) BTW Windows 2000 pro is still the greatest OS ever to Grace a PC harddrive !!!

I'll second that, Wolf! Unfortunately, I'm gonna have to at least create an XP Pro partition to use Premiere Pro and Encore on....sigh.... Oh well. I get off on this stuff...I do....I really, really do....all I have to do is keep repeating that and it will be true... I do I do....

Hmmm.. I've always thought XP was just Win2K in a fancy package. And with some bells and whistles while lacking some other... So programs made for XP (pro or not) should work on Win2K as well.... or so I thought..

I use XP home and have set each and every knob to "standard windows" or "classic". This thing looks just like my old and trusted win2k - even a tad like my NT4 SP6 which I use at work. Regarding Poser 5: I had one of the earliest versions of it - and it ran just fine (as I dare say now!). I never could find the errors others had. Luck of the idiot, I presume ;-) Willy Wolf359: I didn't intend any "war" I only couldn't resist a funny remark ;-)

Hmm...I'd suggest using a different browser, such as Mozilla's Firefox. Internet Exploder (hehe) sucks. Mozilla Firefox - "The Browser Reloaded" ^_^ Jay