I believe most of us, one time or another, had our web browser’s home page hijacked. That is, when we launch our web browser such as Internet Explorer (IE) it shows a different site from the default website or the site which we had set.

Previously, a spam website can do this is by changing your homepage setting in your IE. This is not permanent and users can easily change the casino or porn websites back to the desired site manually.

However, now spammers have resorted to sending .all files into our computer without ours and our web browsers’ acknowledgement (even if you have ActiveX disabled). Those .dll files will manipulate the registry and change the web browsers’ registries every time the computer starts, resulting in a homepage that is assigned by the spammer. And your search engine is also linked to their search page which is often the spammers’ websites.

It requires expertise to remove those .dll files. Changing the registry wouldn’t help as it would go back to the same thing every time you restart your computer. Spam removal software such as Ad-aware will also not be able to detect or remove those files.

One software (free) which can effectively evict those malicious browser-hijacking files is HijackThis, if used carefully. If your start and search pages keep getting switched, HijackThis can automate the process of resetting them.

Clicking its Scan button will list out the way your internet configuration has departed from the standard Windows setup - altered registry entries, new IE toolbars, downloaded ActiveX objects, etc.

Select each item on the list that you do not understand or recognise, then click “Info” to get more details before doing anything. Once you’ve found the suspicious entries, proceed carefully. Fix only a few of them at a time, then open your browser to see if it’s back to normal and reboot to see if the fix holds.

Remember to use HijackThis’ backup feature, just in case.

Saving Emails before Reformatting

1. Click on ‘Drive C:’
2. Click on ‘Documents and Setting’
3. Click on ‘Username’
4. Open ‘Application Data’
(If you can’t see it, go to Tools > Folder Options’ > View > Check ‘Show hidden files and folders’
5. Open ‘Identities’ folder
6. Here you will find one or more folders with the following identity - (02D323-blah blah blah)
7. All you have to do is to either zip all these folders up or save them onto thumb drive or an external hard disk
8. Voila ! All your messages including Inbox, Sent items, Deleted items…etc. is now saved.
9. You get to save everything, minus the hassle of having to click on every message.
10. When you open up your freshly installed Outlook Express/Outlook, just go to File…Import…Messages.
11. Select the version of Outlook Express/Outlook that you are using and select the identity you want to import from (just select the main identity only)
12. Browse to the folder where your identity is saved {refer to Step 4 above)
13. Ensure that you have the Outlook Express/Outlook folder selected.
13. Now select all the folders you want to import and voila, every thing is back in place like it was before.
14. You can also save the address book file from C:\windows\application data\ microsoft\address book\(your name).wab.

Sometimes when you put in a music CD or a thumb drive Windows will pop up a Autoplay dialogue that is full of entries for programs which you may not use or may not even have installed. To clean them up you will need to install a free program from Microsoft called TweakUI [http://www.download.com/Tweak-UI/3000-2341_4-10002117.html?hhTest=1].

1.Run this program

2. Click the plus sign next to “My Computer”

3. Click the plus sign next to “AutoPlay”

4. Select “Handlers”

5. You’ll see a “Delete” button, but it doesn’t seem to work; instead, click the listing you want to get rid of and click the “Edit” button.

6. Uncheck all the drives listed under the “Supported Media” category.

7. Click the “Ok” button to save your changes and close TweakUI, and you should see your simplified AutoPlay dislogue the next time you pop in a CD or thumb drive.

TweakUI, however, doesn’t run in Windows Vista.

Enabling Autorun

1. In Windows, click Start,
and then choose Run.

2. Enter D: \autorun.exe (where D: is your CD-ROM drive. NB: There is a space between : and \)

Turning off Autorun

Option (A)

1. Click My Computer

2. Select the CD drive

3. Right click on the drive and select ‘Properties’

4. Select the ‘Autoplay’ tab

5. Select the ‘Take no action’ option from the ‘Select an action to perform’ menu and click ‘Apply’

Option (B)

1. Open the Registry Editor by clicking on ‘Start/Run’

2. Type ‘regedit’ and click ‘OK’

3. Navigate to the branch ‘HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Cdrom’.

4. Now double-click on the ‘Autorun’ value in the right pane and set its value to 0.

5. In case the option is not already defined, you can create it by selecting ‘Edit|New|DWORD Value’. Name it ‘Autorun’.

6. For the changes to take effect, you will have to log out and log back in.

Caveat here: After you have made these registry changes, Windows will no longer be notified when you insert the CD.

1. Click Start button

2. Run…

3. Click Browse

4. Browse to the drive containing your CD-Rom, open the folder called Data and click on the file XXX.exe then click Open then OK. You will see a pop-up window asking if you want to install a codec. Click Install. The codec installs within a few seconds.

5. Click Start button, then Run… Click Browse and go to the drive containing your CD-Rom.

6. Change Files of Type… to read All Files.
7. Click on the file Start.hta (actual filename may be different from this)  then Open then OK.
8. The presentation should start.