Interenet Explorer exhibiting erratic behavior after removal of spyware any repair ideas?

Question

About two days ago my fiance went and downloaded and installed a file sharing program called bearshare of course it had all kinds of malware in it. I went in and uninstalled the mywebsearch or whatever program which had installed both an IE and FIrefox search bar. I also downloaded hijack this and made sure that all was clean there. Afterwards I went to an online virus scanner I found off of pchell.com and found 1 more program and removed it. AdAware SE gives me the all clear and I was done or so I thought. After all was said and done IE will not do a few things. The 1st and most annoying is that all textbox elements are inactive i would say they appear normal but you cannot copy,paste,cut, or type into or out of any textbox or textarea elements I tried using several different websites and no luck. Help please! 2nd less annoying when I go to Help-> About to try to get the version IE Crashes same if i try to go to the history or internet options ? Any Ideas? we're on XP Pro SP2

Answer 1

go to http://www.winxptutor.com/ieabout.htm. this is EXACTLY what will fix your puter *wink wink*. you are missing some registry keys. they just need to be reset and you're done. voila!

Answer 2

Sounds like you need to repair IE. Try this. I know it says SP1 but the same should work with SP2.

Windows XP and Windows XP SP1: Reinstall or repair Windows XP
To repair or reinstall Internet Explorer and Outlook Express in Windows XP, complete the following procedure while you are logged on as an administrator:
1.Use the System File Checker tool to scan all of the protected files on your computer:
a. Click Start, and then click Run.
b. In the Open box, type sfc /scannow, and then click OK.

Note that you may be prompted for the Windows XP or Windows XP Service Pack 1 installation media.
2.Test to determine if the issue is resolved. If the issue is resolved, skip the remaining steps. If the issue is not resolved, continue to the next step.
3.Complete an in-place upgrade of Windows XP, a repair of Windows XP, or reinstall Windows XP. For additional information about how to complete an in-place upgrade or repair of Windows XP, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:
315341 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/315341/) How to perform an in-place upgrade (reinstallation) of Windows XP
4.To reinstall Windows XP updates, visit the following Microsoft Windows Update Web site:
http://windowsupdate.microsoft.com/

Answer 3

My suggestion - kick your fiance's butt for installing crap like than on your computer - stupid thing to do. Then, stop using IE all together. Most malevolent programs are focused to IE and Firefox. If you stop using this 'holy' software you will find less problems in the long run. I use Netscape. If you truly want to keep using IE or Firefox, I would suggest a reload of the software - you should be able to find that software almost anywhere because it makes hackers happy that you are making their job so much easier.

Answer 4

this will fix it
XoftSpy 4.22 is the Latest and Most Advanced Spyware Detection and

pop up spyware
Spyware
W32/Spybot
Browser Hijackers
Adware
Malware
Keyloggers
trojans
worms
back door trojans
Malicious mobile code
MALICIOUS SCRIPTS
toolbar trojans that dont show up

download xoftspy422 and install it then run it stop the scan and click on scan settings tick every box and click on where it says >> click here to select a folder then tick the (c) thats your hard drive if you have 2 hard drives tick the 2 of them then click ok
then click start when the scan is done click on remove tab

http://www.paretologic.com/products.aspx


ewido anti-spyware 4.0
http://www.grisoft.com/doc/10/lng/us/tpl/tpl01?prd=ews

Answer 5

use firefox, it's faster, more secured, and you can do tabbed browing, check it out at http://www.mozilla.com/firefox just install all the extentions and it'll work better than internet explorer.