IE Browswer is getting hijacked. I set the home page to google, but it
keeps getting taken over by www.fastsearch.com or .cc or something
similar. I have tried HistoryKill, SpyBot Search and Destroy and
AdAware, in addition to anti-virus software, but nothing seems to
work. Every time I restart my system, this pernicious site takes over.
What can I do?

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Request for Question Clarification by pinkfreud-ga on 25 Feb 2004 11:55 PST

Fastsearch is a variant of a remarkably tenacious hijacker called
CoolWebSearch. The easiest way to regain control of your system is to
download and run a program called CWShredder which was created by
Merijn of Spywareinfo.com. Merijn has an entire page of info about
CoolWebSearch and its many relatives:

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/cwschronicles.html

You can download CWShredder here:

http://www.merijn.org/files/CWShredder.exe 

Please try this and let me know how it works out. If this solves your
problem, I'll be pleased to post an official answer to your question.
If the problem persists, we'll keep trying.

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Clarification of Question by kreemcore-ga on 26 Feb 2004 07:40 PST

Well, the answer provided by pinkfreud-ga seemed to do the trick. CW
Shredder took care of the hijacking problem. I appreciate all of the
others' advice, but this answer worked for me.

I'm delighted to hear that things went well! CWShredder once helped me
to zap a really tenacious hijacker that neither Ad-Aware nor SpyBot
could touch. I was hopeful that it would work for you, too, so I did a
Google search using the search terms "cwshredder" and "fastsearch.cc",
which confirmed my expectation that CWShredder would kill your
hijacker.

Google Web Search: "cwshredder" + "fastsearch.cc"
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=cwshredder+fastsearch.cc

Best wishes,
pinkfreud

Check out this thread in comp.security.misc and see if any of the advice suits.

<://www.google.com/groups?threadm=9a073cd9.0312021735.9f9e88d@posting.google.com>

Fastsearch.com is a legit Web search engine. I use it when Google
doesn't do the trick. <http://www.fastsearch.com>

Best,
iome-ga

Hello kreemcore-ga,

You're infected by fastsearch.cc not fastsearch.com. As iome-ga
indicated, fastsearch.com is a popular and highly useful search
engine. Fastsearch.cc is scumware.

http://www.pchell.com/support/fastsearch.shtml
FastSearch.cc Homepage Hijacker
Removal Instructions and Help

Good luck.

~ czh ~

Download a software called "hijackthis" from here:
http://www.spychecker.com/program/hijackthis.html

Then run the scan, and see if any file names "coolwebsearch" or
whatever.  Then just check it, and fix it.  That might work.

If not, just do what I did.  Run the hijackthis again, and elect to
fix everything.  You'll lose good stuff - like your plugins, but those
are easy to replace.  That will definately fix your problem.