Pornsite icon on desktop and sys tray

[J ZEP]

Hi - I hope you all had a good and safe xmas and got through the new year celebrations in one piece :-).
I have just had a visit from an out of town friend over xmas and he tells me he has acquired an icon (from one of those sites - yes) on his desktop and i am sure he said in the system tray as well. I am pretty sure he said it was only in those places and hasn't taken over his homepage. But on clicking the icon it takes you to the porn site by the sounds of things. I know this has been covered before but haven't been able to find it seaching F1 so far (only posts covering homepage, fav's etc... getting taken over). He can't remember the site name it goes to, so i will have to wait till he gets home in a day or two to find that one out. But he said deleting it won't work etc... And as they have children he wants it removed as it is quite explicit when you click on it. He is a newbie so i want to keep it simple as i will have to e-mail the instructions to him.
If i remember rightly from what i have read on here, some of these sites have a removal tool to get rid of the icons etc... at their sites?? Am i right here? And next i am presuming we would need to use ad-aware or somethiing along those lines too? I haven't tried ad-aware yet myself so won't be the best at providing him with instructions either.
So if anybody has had this happen and solved it, your help would be appreciated, and/otherwise i will post when he gives me the name of the offending site.
Thanks :-)
Oh just in case, he is using xp pro.

[Chilling_Silence]

Im going to assume its loading each time on boot...

Tell your friend to click on the start menu and select "Run".

Then type "msconfig"

There will be several tabs, one is labelled autorun or startup (Going from memory, Im on 2K sorry.. :() click on that and it may be in there, un tick the box.

Also, check the C:\ Directory, and in the
-Start Menu
-All Programs (Or whatever XP calls it)
-Startup

It may be in there too!

I hope this is a good lesson for your friend...

Cheers


Chilling_Silence

[Clueless]

Yes i beleive its your "freinds" computer :-p

Perhaps you could get your "freind" to post to us direct?

.Clueless

[nz_liam]

Your friend you say :D... Next thing you going to tell me that it isint my computer with the NT5 SP2/3 & and NVIDA device conflict, but my friends :p

[J ZEP]

Thanks Chilling, I will get him to check "misconfig" first off then, i thought it would be a real drama to get rid of, so hopefully it will be that easy, but i would like to remove whatever it is from his computer so i guess i/we will need to do more to actually remove it?? Actually i check out gaming sites for my other half and always come across them there (popups), but the thing is he would still have to choose to "install" when the window comes up wouldn't he??

>>>3Yes i beleive its your "freinds" computer :-p Perhaps you could get your "freind" to post to us direct?

Clueless and Liam you ratbags:p, i will be catching up with you 2 on CF1 soon;-) :D

[Craigb]

I had a "friend' who had this on my.. I mean his computer once too. It installed itself in the program file and the only way to get rid of it was to go to start - control panel - add or remove programs and uninstall it from there. You will also have to do a registry sweep and clean it out of there as well.
Cheers
Craig.

[oldaddy76]

About a year ago I had a rogue porn site installed in NETWORKING.
Go the Control panel and have a look. It was there for a year before I realized it was a rogue server self installed. I really think it came when I was actually on a porn site months earlier.....the moral of the story for me was keep away from salacious sites no matter how innocent thy may originally appear.....

[Craigb]

> but the thing is he would still have to
> choose to "install" when the window comes up wouldn't
> he??

Not from my... I mean my friends experience. The thing will install itself and the first you know is you see a little icon in your tray. Also as I recall, it would also add an alternate internet connection option and change your home page. I think it was called "Paradise" with a heart icon. Sound familiar
Craig.

[Heather P]

A certain person, not so far from where I sit, managed to install something similar a while ago. I had hoped that assuring him that a complete reformat was the only way to fix it would prevent future visits to such sites. He howled over the loss of some game scores.

It's not because I don't want him visiting such places as because I know who has to fix things when they go wrong!

It didn't work. When I played with the settings in the proxy and banned certain types of sites it was noticed.

The only solution was to keep him off my machine.

[J ZEP]

O.K guys and gals - just got an e-mail from him saying the name of this icon (desktop) is "Adult Chat" - i guess you can imagine what a search of that criteria brings up :^O. So if that sounds familiar let me know please as its a bit hard trying to remove something that you don't know what it is or what site it comes from, but i have told him to e-mail me the properties of the icon, so hopefully i will know what site or program it is from that i presume. Thanks :-)