I have a problem

[megalomania]

I have a small Internet Explorer problem that I was hoping my members can help me with. I may have been surfing some porn sites yesterday when one of them changed my default startup homepage to a crappy scam links page. While this happens every now again with warez type sites, it is never this bad. When I clicked on the tools button at the top of the page, and then clicked on the internet options tab to go change the link, I get this error

"This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator."

Now this really pisses me off! I went into the control panel and clicked internet options and changed the link back to my default. When I rebooted and opened IE, it went back to the damn scam page. Does anyone know how to remove this "restriction" from my comp?

[mrloud]

What a bitch!

What operating system are you running?

[mongo blongo]

WOW!! This EXACT same thing is happening to me!!
It started a few days ago!
If I right click on my IE icon on my desktop and go to properties I can reach the Internet options and change it back. It's stayed ok up till now but I can't get to the Internet options when using IE for some reason! :(
If I try I get the exact same error as you Mega.


"This operation has been cancelled due to restrictions in effect on this computer. Please contact your system administrator."

It's pissing me off too!

If I remember correctly, the scam page was a blue one but I cant remember what was on it (bad memory).
same as you Mega?

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: mongo blongo ]</p>

[nbk2000]

Open up START/FILES/FIND FILES OR FOLDERS. Copy in the last part of the offending URL ***.***/***/smutty.htminto the CONTAINING TEXT search field. Have it look in your root drive (assuming C :) .

It'll probably find the web pages in your browser cache. Delete all these and flush your cookies cache. You may have to do it manually from file manager.

Next, open up your USER.DAT file (you may have to use EDIT from DOS). Find the offending URL (same process as above) and change it as highlighted below.

http://server3001.freeyellow.com/nbk2000/homepage_default.jpg

Then save it. Open up your file manager and change the attributes of USER.DAT to read-only if it isn't already.

THEN, find your .DUN files (assuming dial-up) with a text editor. Check those for the URL too. Then go to your control panel, open up network, and delete any clients listed. These are the source of the annoying "Can't change setting...." bullshit.

If all else fails, reinstall from your disk image. You DO have a disk image saved that you can reinstall from, right?

That's what I do. I have several different version of windows saved (though I broke my original windows CD) as HDD images that I can reinstall to in 20 minutes from a freshly formated drive.

Anything starts acting weird or erratic, I just reformat and reinstall right back to a fresh slate. Don't have to worry about losing anything since my backup script does that everytime I close out or click it manually.

With windows, you need to practice defensive computing. RTPB "Plan for Failure" was inspired by Bill Gates wonderful product on a weekly basis. :)

Hope this helps.

Oh, and what's the URL for the offending page? I'd like to read their source to see what they're doing to cause this.

[ January 06, 2002: Message edited by: nbk2000 ]</p>

[Heavy Recoil]

Weekly, you must have one great computer, mine is lucky if is stays up a whole day, all I can say is learn linux. Bill Gates is the steriotipical(sp?) capitalist pig, suckling the tit of american computer programing, well if he lives like a pig, maybe he should go out like a pig. strug out ang gutted, or maybe rosted over an open fire.
as for the program, blackmailing purposes? :)

[megalomania]

I actually found a doc dealing with this problem in the Microsoft knowledge database at <a href="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=%2fsearch%2fviewDoc.aspx%3fdocID %3dKC.Q216583%26dialogID%3d8782401%26iterationID%3 d1%26sessionID%3danonymous%7c6520058" target="_blank">http://su pport.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=%2fsearch%2fviewDoc.aspx%3fdocID %3dKC.Q216583%26dialogID%3d8782401%26iterationID%3 d1%26sessionID%3danonymous%7c6520058</a>
Since one of the documents solutions is to reinstall IE, and since I am using the default IE 5.0 because I recently installed my OS, I will try that first.
The offending url is <a href="http://mycpworld.com" target="_blank">http://mycpworld.com</a> which redirects to <a href="http://216.110.157.212/" target="_blank">http://216.110.157.212/</a> whereupon my Norton Antivirus sees that it is running a malicious script and closes all IE windows. In user.dat I see there are several references to mycpworld
mycpworld.comearch.com/search/ie.html%shtml%s/search/ie.html%s
mycpworld.comer.com/autoload.cfm?5-1-25-130er.com/autoload.cfm?5-1-25-130er.com/autoload.cfm?5-1-25-1300oft.com/isapi/redir.dll?Prd=ie&Pver=5.0&Ar=ie5update&O1=b1ò
mycpworld.comarchhttp://mycpworld.com

[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: megalomania ]</p>