Adware blue bar on my computer??

[BobY777]

I have been plagued with this "search type tool" on the bottom of my computer screen.

It has a blue bar type of back ground. Also has a "Search" type space on the right with a green Go button.

It has things like: Make money, Music, Casino, Investing, Travel, Mortage, Dating, Travel, Careers, Credit, Computers, Insurance.

This thing is a pain.

Anyone know why how I can get rid of this thing.

Oh. It comes up all the time when I start Internet Explorer.

I can get rid of it, by clickong on the red X to the right of its blue bar.

Thanks for any help.

I use Spy Bot, Ad Aware, and Spy Sweeper. None of them gets rid of this darn thing.

[spiderbite]

It's in the registry somewhere..

I would take it in and let some one do that for you.

Or you could back up all your files and start over....

[BobY777]

Well I finally got rid of that darn blue bar. It was something from lop.com.

All I had to do was go to Add/Remove Programs and delete Search Plugin. I saw that before, but I thought it was to something else.

Lop.com actually said how to delete it.

I used cleaning type programs like SpyBot, Adaware, CW Shredder, and Spysweeper, but none got rid of the lop.com blue bar. They did get rid of a lot of other lop.com stuff though. And hundreds of other files.

I even tried Hijack This, but it is so difficult to know what to erase with that program. I did find a place that analyzes the results of Hijack This so I did erase some stuff, but nothing helped.

Today I tried ZoneAlarm Pro. But I got the blue screen of death when trying to load that program. Same thing happened to me about 4 months ago. So I tried to only load the basic Zone Alarm. At least with that my computer finally booted up.

None of that stuff worked.

I finally did the Add/Remove program to get rid of the blue bar. I found the remove info on one of the lop.com links. I was afraid that if I did what they said, it would cause more problems for me, since I don't trust lop.com. But it worked. I had nothing else left to try.

One big problem is these "cleaning" programs caused me to lose all my address bar addresses for IE and Google. Have no idea where they went. Fortunately I still have my favorites.

I don't trust that these cleaning programs might not wipe away all my IE favorites and all my .pst files from Outlook, just because I may answer something wrong. Heck maybe thats why I lost all my addresses in the address drop down box of IE and Google. So I need to be able to back that stuff up.

I copy the .pst files of Outlook over to an extra folder, just so I have an extra copy, just in case I lose all the .pst files. I did lose all my .pst files several days ago, but found them in the Recycle bin labeled under another name. I have no idea how they got there, except it may have been a virus or trojan, etc.

Heck several days ago I lost about 20 files from the C drive root directory. Found them in the Recycle bin and all my previous files that were in the Recycle bin were completely gone. I have no idea how these things got in the Recycle bin. I moved them back to the root directory of the C drive.

So I would like to get a copy of all my favorites from IE. But I don't know where to find these files or what they are called. Anybody know?

Thank you all for all your input.

On by the way I not only lost all my IE addresses in the drop down box, but it made me lose the login name and password settings for Wi-Fi Planet for logging me in automatically.

I typed a whole bunch of stuff here for this post only to lose it after I found out I wasn't logged in. I usually log in automatically here. When I did login, I lost all the stuff I typed. So I'm retypeing it again here.

Computers are so much fun...lol.

[BobY777]

I found the Favorite files so now I made an extra copy. Found them under Documents & Settings / ADministrator.

I mentioned that all my web addresses in the IE drop down address box and all the search words from the Google drop down box were lost. I must have done too good a job of cleaning suspected files out with Spysweeper, Spybot, Adaware, CW Shredder, and Hi Jack This. I must have accepted some file for deletion when I shouldn't have. Heck it's hard to know what all to accept. I can see where people may cause themselves problems where none existed before, just by using these cleaning programs.

So that leads me to ask, if anyone here knows where these files may reside for the IE address and Google search word drop down boxes?

I have the Google drop down box as part of my IE tool bar at the top of the screen, since I use Google so much.

Thanks much

[wirelessoceans]

Bob,

These free programs for spyware removal are free for a reason, they don't work to well for viruses and advanced spyware. Invest in Norton or TrendMicro, the $50 bucks will be saved in headaches alone....especially since you do alot of wireless work and there programs have advanced intrusion detection.

As for the IE drop down. These items are stored as history. If you right click your desktop IE icon and go to properties you will see "clear history" this is how you clear it. The files are usuually kept in a content folder in your windows program files. If there gone you usually cannot retrieve them. ;)

[BobY777]

Hi wireless oceans:

I finally got th ings running real smooth now.

I forgot to mention that I also ran Norton Antivirus Corporate edition. Viruswise, I was doing real good.

That darn lop.com had an actual program on my machine, that I was able to get rid of with Add/Remove programs. It was not plain at all about saying it was for the lop.com program. I found a reference to it in the lop.com program and decided to take a chance that they were truthful about it. It did get rid of their program.

Now things are running so smoothly. I can't believe it.

I got a couple grey hairs over it. But I'm ok now...lol.

I even use the Zonealarm. It has blocked some intrusion attempts for me. I'm happy now. It was a pain for a while though.

Thanks for the info.

Now if I can just find the file that has the files showing my IE address drop down box and the Google search drop down box. I'll back those up and then I'll really be doing ok.

I know those two files have to be hiding somewhere on my machine.

It's amazing the AdAware, Spysweeper, and SpyBot found a lot of stuff. Now that things are running so smoothly, and I'm using Zone Alarm, I don't think that I'm getting as much junk on my computer now.

[BobY777]

I found out that Ad Aware is the culprit, that caused me to lose the IE address bar addresses and my Google search words.

I duplicated the problem again tonight when I ran Ad Aware.

Now I'm worried that Ad Aware is making me lose files that I don't even know about yet. Evidentally I'm accepting files to delete that Ad Aware presents to me, but I don't realize that they are really important files that should not be deleted. This can happen pretty easy though.

I still don't know where these files reside though. I believe they lie in a registery and not a normal file.