What exactly is a dialer?

[nl5xsk1]

Question for you all ... my family's PC is a Windows 95 system (with no firewall) and my brother-in-law was online over the weekend, and he says that when he tried to download somthing a Trojan virus warning popped up. He did all the normal actions (stopped the download, deleted the virus things, etc) and then he ran Norton anti-virus (it came up with nothing). But the home page on the PC is now an IP address for some search-page-thing and a 'do you want to install something or other?' pop-up pops-up. He can't re-set the homepage, as it defaults back to this search page each time. Plus, the page launches on it's own if the PC is on.

 

What could be causing this? The virus scan keeps coming up with nothing, so I don't think it's a virus, but I'm not the most knowledgeable with computers. My guess is that it's a dialer, but I really don't even know what a dialer is.

 

Any advice on what can be done to fix their PC?

[the max]

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&saf...q=define:Dialer

 

Try HiJack This! to get rid of that homepage nonsense as well.

 

And tell them to get behind a firewall, ASAP.

[nl5xsk1]

Great, thanks, Max ... I have to go by their house today after work anyways, so will see what I can do with the HiJack This. Hopefully it works, he feels like shit for screwing up my mother's computer.

 

And, for whatever reason, my mother's dead-against getting behind a firewall. She says that she doesn't go online enough to justify spending the (minimal) money for one, and most of the free online ones don't work with Win95.

[the max]

http://soho.sygate.com/download_buy.htm

 

http://www.looknstop.com/En/download.htm

 

Both of those are free downloads, and are supported on Win95.

 

I'll keep looking to find one that isn't just a free trial.

[nl5xsk1]

Wow, thanks again, Max ... I'm keeping my fingers crossed that one of these works, I hate the idea that their PC is vulnerable.

 

I owe you one.

[the max]

http://www.voodoofiles.com/19708

 

http://www.voodoofiles.com/15923

 

http://www.voodoofiles.com/15962

 

http://www.voodoofiles.com/15839

 

A friend of mine hooked me up with the link to voodoofiles.com

 

http://www.voodoofiles.com/type.asp?cat_id=26

 

that's the link to all of their firewalls, and it tells you underneath each individual link what OS it can run on.

 

Hope it helps.

[nl5xsk1]

Max, thanks for your help, but it didn't seem to work. The firewall installed fine, so they're safe moving forward. But I couldn't delete the items that had the sketchy IP address that came up when I ran the HiJack This. Whatever created them is named in a way that I can't ID it, and without removing that I can't remove the IP address that's now the home page.

 

Thanks for all your help, though.