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Computer help needed


Ashnod

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Okay....

I've done everything I know how to do, with all the tools I've currently got at my disposal including spyware removers and Hijackthis, but I CANNOT get rid of this FUCKING Provilation problem.

If anyone has advice, please send it my way, cause this is getting obscenely annoying.

I can provide a log of what Hijackthis finds if that would be helpful.

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If you've tried all the usual methods (like Ad-Aware and such), and nothing's working, you might like to try restoring the registry from backup. This does, of course, require that you have a backup of your registry from before Provilation got on your system.

This is effectively the painless way of going through your registry and manually deleting/changing any part of the Registry that has Provilation around it, which is often the only way to completely destroy it.

The other possibility is to go through the list of areas of Windows that programs can auto-start from, and removing Provilation from each of these areas. It won't remove the program, but it will prevent it from being a pain in the arse, after which you can spend time isolating and whacking it at your leisure...

Other than that, I got nothing.

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I have to second AdAware. For the simple reason that the latest update of the AdWare/SpyWare definitions pretty much covers all bases. Not to mention it doesn't recognize harmless registry changes as a threat like SpyBot Search and Destroy does.

I don't know how many times SB S&D has killed Microsoft Media Player.

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AdAware has proved ineffective thus far. frown There's something on my machine that I cannot locate that keeps replacing all the junk that I remove.

My URL prefixs are compromised, according to AdAware, and I can't get them cleaned.

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I'm with Kirby: checking for the registry entries is going to be your best bet. However, messing around with it can be rather dangerous if you make a mistake. If you've got a local friend who's good with computers or has/does tech support, I'd ask them to help you out: fixing computers in person is always way easier than doing it over the Internet or the phone.

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Thanks, Alchemist, I tried that repeatedly before asking for help but I can't seen to find a file called fonts.hta anywhwere. Either this version's corrupter file is named something else, or I have something that isn't listed on their list of items to delete that is preventing me from seeing it.

As for the other suggestions, PestPatrol seems to have done some good, but I'm going to give Mozilla a shot for a while and see if I have better luck with scrapping IE altogether.

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Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. It worked when I had to get it off of a friend's computer.

Mozilla is definitely the way to go. It's a lot harder to get a case of spyware directly off the net.

Plus, if you're feeling particularly tech savvy, check out litestep (litestep.org or litestep.com). It replaces explorer.exe as your shell, is customizable in the extreme, has all sorts of add-ons, and it's a lot harder for spyware to get its hooks in.

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Ashnod, check out Firefox. It's the light version of Mozilla and it's been rock-solid on my laptop for a long time. Mozilla is cool but it's a processor hog. You should be able to find it at the same location as Mozilla.

And kudos to you for switching: tabbed browsing rules.

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If it's just that file that you need to get rid of, there may be one way of finding it. Find out the general size of the file (the exact size if you can manage it), and find every file on your computer matching that description. You can then go through all of the files you've found, leave the ones you know about alone, and delete the ones you can't account for.

Even better, get a copy of the file, then copy a small segment of the file, and ask Windows to search for any file that has that string in it.

These are kinda bottom-of-the-barrel techniques, but if you're really stuck, it might do the trick...

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I seem to be okay for the time being. PestPatrol might have managed to kill that annoying thing. Mozilla Firefox seems to be working okay now. I didn't realize i was going to have to download a Flash and Java plugin. GRRRRR. All better now, though.

Thanks for asking, Preston. How is your system?

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