rainshine

I have just recently bought a new laptop with windows xp
home edition. At first the homepage for internet explorer
was set to msn.com but all of a sudden a few days ago it
has been set to http://www.geocities.com/yori_mrakkadi -
which is not found and i am pretty sure that i recognize
that yori mrakkadi as an address that i keep getting ****
spam in my hotmail box. When I go into internet tools or
whatever and set the homepage back to default it is fine
while my computer is still on. But when I turn my
computer off and then back on, it goes back to this weird
address. I have tried to block that address from my
internet explorer settings and everything. Does anyone
have any ideas as to why this has happened and what I can
do to remedy it?? Please email me at
rainshine1979@hotmail.com if you can help as this is just
a very little thing but really quite annoying since it is
a new computer. Thank you so much!

john

Sorry to say you have a bug or application that keeps
altering your IE settings when you log on.

To remedy this:

Click Start > Run, enter "msconfig" and hit OK.

Click on the start up tab and go down the list looking
for anything suspecious.
(e.g. strange name, directory etc.)

If you find some weird entries then untick them.
You can see if you have the right program by changing the
IE homepage address, restarting and see if the faulty
Geocity address has come back.

(Look for simple entries as well. Some worms have a entry
such as "run=" and that is it).

If you find the correct entry, look at the path. Then you
can try to find and erase the file.

If you have a virus checker, this may not have happened
in the first place?

John.

jcochran.nospam

Bummer. But since you're not running a web server, you'll want to try
an Internet Explorer group or the microsoft.public.security group for
help.

Jeff