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  1. #1
    dan
    Guest

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    stopping nasty popups

    I found out on tuesday how to stop nasty websites poping things up in windows ie.

    I found a file called host on my pc that was changed by spyware adaware or whatever. after looking at this file after beeing prompted towards it by a website I found hundreds of entries that should not be there. I deleted the file and have so far had no nasty popups. although i got a few regular popups but soon found google stopped those.

    anyhow after replacing my memory on tuesday after mistaking a harddrive problem for being a problem with memory. I really am not botherd though because I have much more ram now. I discoverd my problem was with my harddrive. eventually my drive died on me after about half an hour of formatting. I replaced the drive with an old one gig drive and tried my install disk.
    It would not work. I then installed windows to find the host file in windows was normal. I then tried my restore disk and eventually restored all my drivers with it. I then checked my host file to find it was full of extra content. I threw my restrart disk and installed again. sure enough back to normal no entries in the file appart from the usual ip address or whatever it is. My restall disk was to blame. I never thought of this untill now. but I feel as though it just may help someone else out there.
    I bought my pc from a computer fair. (I should have now better because the graphics card was not installed at all and the restore disk were copies.) anyhow get yourself a new copy of windows and restore from that. don`t use restore disks unless you know where they came from.
    my restore disk was reported to be full of virus by my virus scanner.
    hope this helps some people with problems. and try enabling parental software.
    bye dan

  2. #2
    Super Moderator
    Join Date
    May 2003
    Posts
    3,496

    Default

    Originally posted by dan@Oct 31 2004, 04:02 PM
    I found a file called host on my pc that was changed by spyware adaware or whatever.


    It is important for the operations of your system that the host file exist. The only entry that MUST be present is
    127.0.0.1 localhost

    This is the loopback address, without this, some apps which use the localhost will have problems. As for blocking annoying pop-ups. just change those entries to all using 127.0.0.1
    This will instead of fetching the ads from the servers. be blocked, since the computer will believe the host exists on the localhost. which it does not, so the ad will be blocked.

    I have made a host file, which contains well over 24,000 - thats twenty-four thousand, hosts, being blocked by the host file.

    As long as the entries in the host file all resolve to 127.0.0.1 then no need to remove it.


 

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