*Editors Note - These instructions worked for me on my Windows XP machine, but remember you do this at your own risk as I can not assume any responsibility for you actions. Ken Webmaster and author.

I guess I am naive but I never could figure why anyone would want to destroy or hijack the data on someone's computer. Yet the internet is full of these idiots that seem to get some sort of perverted enjoyment out of this. Jules Verne wrote a story called From The Earth To The Moon. In that story there was a constant battle between an armorer to develop better and better armor that can't be pierced by the newest shells and a munitions developer who is trying to develop newer and newer shells that can pierce any armor. The virus and hijacking fields are like that also. There are many programs out there that are supposed to stop all viruses, there are others built to stop all hijackers and trojans and there are a few that supposedly will stop everything. On the other side there are the virus and trojan makers who keep improving their products and exploiting the holes in the newest software. Some of the most vicious software (all viruses are software) is the type that reads your keyboard and sends your most treasured secrets like you account numbers to others. An example of this is a virus called Modular32. This can be a real bugger to get rid of,.because you won't know where to look and what file to delete. I found that most detection programs don't pick it up.

Here is how to get rid of Module32:

Start the computer in Safe Mode. To do this you usually hold down the F8 key during startup. If you are using any Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, or Windows XP than go to C:/Windows and delete RFV. For Windows NT users go to C:WINNT and delete RFV.

I had a really dilly of a time recently trying to get rid of a search bar that suddenly appeared while I was browsing the internet. Along with the bar I now had a program that changed my homepage every time I started my browser. You might think, well a search bar isn't so bad, but this one sucked. It would allow popups every few minutes and steer me to sites that you wouldn't want to go to especially if you had children in the room with you. No program that I tried would detect it. The best I could do was use a program that would alert me of the change in my home page and ask me if I wanted my old page back. Unfortunately for me I was born a perfectionist and this was not good enough for me. I decided to try and find out more about this hijacker on the internet. The way I usually do this is to type the name of the offending program into the Google search along with the words hijacker or hijacking. You would be surprised what come up. Be prepared for tons of messages from message boards put up by frustrated people with the same problem and asking for help. One of the problems was the program was calling itself toolbar. Many times it isn't enough to delete the offending program. You may also have to go to the registry and delete references to it, and there can be many. You don't want to make any mistakes in the registry, it could crash your computer and prevent you from restarting. I found out that this program was causing havoc all over the internet and I couldn't find any instructions for getting rid of it. It took me hours but I succeeded and here is what I did.

Getting rid of the toolbar and home page hijacker on Windows XP:

Go to C:\Windows\System32\
Delete IEHost.exe
Next I used Startup Cop and deleted a process called Bakra. This process was pointing to IEHost.exe so I knew it was guilty.

Now I had to go to the Register.

Use RegEdit or some other Register Editing Program

Go to HKey_Local_Machine\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\
Delete RunX folder

Some of these programs leech into your system and use things like media players and give out info on your system by connecting to other urls. Your media player becomes your worst enemy and you don't even know it. A very good program for spotting some of these offenders is Spywarescanner and its free. Another is Spy Sweeper and its cheap. Then there is Search & Destroy and Adware. Bazoooka Adware and Spyware Scanner is a useful program that scans your system then will give you instructions for manual removal of the offending software. I have found that no one program can solve all of the spyware problems although some are much better than others. There are many others out there and some are good but some others create long lists of suspected spyware programs and if you are not careful, you will be deleting something you need and you might even have to reinstall Windows. One of the most important things to remember is that you must keep your detection software up to date. I myself use several pieces of detection software running at the same time. I run the AVG virus detection program (Free). Its as good as any that I used to pay for and run. I run Spyware Guard (Free) to detect when some program is trying to change my home page, and TDS-3 a trojan detector. Besides these I run periodic scans with Spybot Search & Destroy and AdWare. I am also behind a firewall.

You would think that with all of this protection I would never get a virus or trojan or hijacker but I do since I do a massive amount of web browsing. But the good news is that I catch most of them before they can do any damage.

So what do I think about those virus creators, that is easy, they should rot in jail. Give them no mercy, after all they didn't give us any when they created those virus programs to destroy our data and cause us days and weeks of unnecessary work and expense. Sometimes I wonder if some of these viruses are being created by terrorists that are experimenting with ways to shut down the internet. The truth is that nothing is 100% safe if it attaches to the internet or plugs into a communications device. It makes you wonder how safe some of our government sites are?