shortcuts created at startup

[korgul]

On a PC that I am working I am getting shortcuts to porn sites on the desktop. If I delete them they come back when it is booted up. The homepage is also changed back to a porn site. I searched the internet but have not found anything that has worked yet.
The shortcuts that are created us the windows helpfile icon the names are:
Anonimious Serfing
Sex forum
Your Home Google

They all point to a diff porn site.
I also found this PC a file that was called svchostc. From what I have gathered it is a trojan. I renamed it so it would not run but the files are still recreated. When the PC is shutdown there were 2 programs that were not responding. one was svchostc.exe and the other is svchosts.exe.

The PC will also boot to the boot menu everytime it reboots. I know there is a way to fix this one as I have had it once before but can not remember how to fix it.

Anyone got any ideas?

Korgul

[tony_j15]

Download Spybot Search and Destroy. Great program for finding that junk.

[korgul]

At the moment it is not connected to the internet. It is a relatives PC and I have it here.

[John Prophet]

WinXP??

On 98se there was the thing in msconfig advanced tab where you could check it to "enable startup menu"

[korgul]

Will double check the msconfig but i have been through that about 4 times now.

[John Prophet]

post up your boot.ini file for us

or just look at it and see if you see an option for the start menu to be popping up


you can look at it from msconfig

[elmers]

tony_j15: "Download Spybot Search and Destroy. Great program for finding that junk."

Easyest way to do it. Download it from another pc and copy it to the one in question.

[korgul]

i went through the msconfig and disabled everthing except the systray.exe. Rebooted and did not get the shortcuts back. I then went back into the mscofig and started loading things again until I got the shortcuts back. It was a program called svchost located in the C:\windows directory.

Now to figure out why it always boots to the boot menu.

JP this is a 98 box

[John Prophet]

oh...did you look at msconfig at the "advanced" tab (lower right corner)?? if you click advanced it gives a little "troubleshooting" menu..one of the options is "enable start menu"

[Gettinbye]

You've got a browser hijacker. Spybot would be the first place to start-should pick up whatever browser hijacker is affecting your system. Be sure to download the manual updates to transfer to the system as well.
Another approach would be to do a search on the affected computer for svchostc.exe and delete the file, but this could affect the ability of the machine to connect to the internet if it has changed network settings (which it more than likely has).
Yet another thing to look for-in control panel>add/remove programs, look for any installed programs that do not look familiar or have reference to a "dialer' in the name. Sometimes (though, in all honesty, not often) you can simply remove the hijack program via control panel.

[korgul]

fixed last issue with it booting to bootmenu all of the time.

edited the msdos.sys file.
changed the line from :

bootmenu=1
to
bootmenu=0

worked like a charm

[korgul]

Thanks all

gettinbye- i deleted the file and had no ill effects as of yet.

[John Prophet]

lol editing the msdos.sys file like you did is the same as checking or unchecking that thing I mentioned in msconfig.

I remember once I had a comp that had like 256m of ram but only 128 or whatever was showing up...finally I found an article about this setting or that setting.....I manually did it, like you did....then I found out it was just a setting in msconfig /advanced.



Any clue how it got there to start with?


JP

[korgul]

My guess is that MS did it. They had called MS to try and get it fixed and the tech had them do all sorts of things but never fixed the problem.