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I successfully removed this manually from my husbands Windows 98 computer. It took a couple of hours.

First of all I triggered the hijack by deleting the files I recognized as malicious. Then I restarted his computer. I searched by date and time from Windows Explorer to find newly created files. I could tell by the date and time which files had been created upon startup. Then I manually deleted those. Somehow I figured out the executible that was creating these files. I probably pressed "Control, Alt Delete" and spotted the *.exe that was running that was not familiar. I don't remember the name of that *.exe file, sorry. His computer would not let me delete the *.
exe file because it was in use!

I finally opened the computer in Dos mode. The *.exe file was hidden so I had to use the attrib command to unhide and then rename it. I then deleted the *.exe in dos mode. All this is very complicated and not recommended for the novice.

I am glad the cwsshredder worked as what I did was a lot of work. I am very familiar with which *.exe files should be running on my computers at all times. I frequently press control alt delete and check which tasks are executing just to be familiar with each of my programs *.exe files.

Help for viruses and malware:

Ad-Aware ... Spybot ... Peper Uninstaller ... HijackThis... CWShredder ... Spyware Blaster ... IE Spyad ... Free online Virus scan ... AVG AntiVirus ... LSPfix ... How to Show Hidden Files ... How to boot into Safe Mode ... How did I get infected in the first place?

Things you need--(all FREE)
Anti-Virus
AVG Anti-Virus version 7 (free) release available...

Avast
Firewall
Kerio(Direct Download) Zone Alarm

If are using zone alarm it may slow your PC. Try Outpost Firewall http://www.agnitum.com/products/outpost or Sygate Firewall http://www.sygate.com/ both have FREE and Pro versions and are heads above ZA.
Misc.
IE Spyads SpywareBlaster Spyware Guard
Windows Update- you must keep updated, it is the start of a secure system-
get all CRITICAL Updates

Things you want(Still Free)

I use Firefox PR1 and IMHO, beats the sox off MS Explorer. Life is good with tabs. Click the link and give it a try.

Ad-Aware
Spybot S&D

SpywareBlaster
MS MVP Hosts file

Mike Lin's Homepage and get the Startup Control Panel and Startup Monitor tools.

The best forum for malware removal:

http://forums.spywareinfo.com/index.php?s=262d844129208feb8b0cf5b0186a32f6&act=SC&c=4
SWI Forums--

I've got that too. It's only been happening for a short time, I figured it was something I picked up while downloading a new version of java. Can't keep a home page anymore, and when I go to hotmail or ebay, right after I enter id and pw, I find myself at "about:blank." Tried to suppress it with something behind the Security tab in Tools, but not sure that's really effective.