Leisure vs Security: Try it in Safe Mode

Enjoying full 24x7 internet time in the campus network from your dormitory room? Not always. My computer is connected to my campus network and is located from my room. But it's not always that fun. These days were full of threats came from virus, and yes, adware and spyware. Thanks to Norton Antivirus and Zone Alarm, I managed to escape the critical situation, but after re-installing Windows also :) . Still have the latent enemy: spyware and adware.

One of the most annoying is that my IE browser always point to http://letgohome.com/ at its startup. Amazingly, i cannot change it to other place (which is, I used to put good-old-simple google homepage on it) . My attempts of change is always nullified, and restored to that letgohome site ( The site itself is a fake portal, trying to provide complete links in many categories, but it is all deception. try it for yourself ).

Of the SpyWare Removal Arsenal is that of SpyBot Search And Destroy. failed. (although it did found many strange executables on the running process and take a good care of it). The "letgohome" syndrome remains. Then I tried with Microsoft AntiSpyWare (beta). The interface is convincing, and the result also (look) fine. But it failed too. The last tool I use is from LavaSoft Ad-Aware SE Professional. I won't say this last tool is the problem solver, but i just say this lead to the problem solving. Hold on.

This LavaSoft (repeatedly) making my Windows XP restart after producing the (very) weird dialog box that said, RPC service terminated unexpectedly. Windows will be shutdown in (a minute or so) > it countdown. Oh my God, what kind of strange dialog box! I've never seen that before. But then, I'd like to run this last arsenal of LavaSoft. So Why don't you try to restart Windows in safe mode, my mind said that. And I did. Here the sparkle comes to my brain. Why dont you run all of those anti spy things in safe mode also?? plus the antivirus? hmmm... :). And I did! You know what the result? This "letgohome" thing is done! :) Thank God.

My conclusion after spending hours of playing with antivirus thing or antispy thing is that: Try to run it in safe-mode!* May God be with you.

* Norton AntiVirus won't run in its full feature if launched from the safemode. And most program will be much slower when run from the safemode (due to the lack of performance oriented feature like caching and soon)