Frankly speaking, you went somewhere you were not supposed to go, or did something you shouldn't have done. This kind of problem doesn't happen when you visit a known "safe" web site such as Renderosity or Yahoo. It comes when people visit porn sites, warez sites, sites known to cause troubles. Yes, on the rare situation, these problems are encountered because people didn't use the most elementary precautions such as antivirus or firewall programs. But again you are not exposed to these problems when you practice safe computing.

I ran into one person who had this problem and it was because her browser had been hijacked to go to one particular web site each time IE ran. The beginning of the solution was simple: just send IE to a different web site upon startup. From that point, the cleanup was easy, using some of the many tools I always advise.

At any rate, the kind of trouble you have is the kind of trouble often left to computer experts who charge a fee.

Groingrinder, in your message you don't state what operating system you have, nor what version of IE you have. I do believe the current version of IE, or the latest Windows XP Service Pack would eliminate or keep those problems from happening. And Microsoft will send you the CD containing SR2 for free if you visit their web site and ask for it. JHoagland stated his problem started awhile ago, and was allegedly fixed. Obviously it was not fixed.

Message edited on: 12/05/2004 15:06

Message edited on: 12/05/2004 15:08