IE 6/7 Home page trouble

[P.Pilcher]

I have just bought Mrs P. a brand new shiny Acer laptop for Christmas. In setting it up for her and putting her usual software on it, I needed to change the home page of it's copy of I.E. 6 to her usual one from the default of Acer's own website. Could I do it? No chance! I have tried every trick I know to change the home page but, on closing down and reselecting the program, the Acer website obstinately reappears as the home page. Finally I changed over to I.E. 7 but the said homepage changing was still locked. This gives no trouble at all on I.E. 7 on my own machines (where PPRuNe is my homepage of course) and I know that I can probably cure the problem by switching her machine over to Opera or Firefox, but why should I? There is some tick box somewhere which locks the homepage selection but I just can't find it. Naturally the help facility is useless. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance

P.P.

[ZH875]

Try running spybot, check start spybot > click on tools in the left hand column > ie tweaks > under miscellaneous locks check that the "lock ie start page" and "lock ie control panel" boxes are unchecked.

You may have to be in advanced mode to do this.
Use the mode button in the toolbar to change if required.

or run Regedit and delete the following keys (if they exist - but copy/export them first!!!)

; lock home page for all users
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel]
"HomePage"=dword:00000001

; lock home page for current user
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel]
"HomePage"=dword:00000001

[CYPR]

From past experience you MAYBE infected with a Trojan by the name 'Spy Falcon' or one of its varients. This trojan can be difficult to remove. There are a number of web sites dedicated to the removal of Spy Falcom.
I was fortunate in removing this 'pain' by running Spybot in SAFE MODE three times. I will try and find the info that I used tomorrow if you are still stuck.

Good luck

[P.Pilcher]

Many thanks both of you. I will try your recommendations when Mrs. P. goes out so that I can work on her suprise undetected. I sincerely hope that it has not caught a Trojan as AVG, Spybot and Adaware SE was loaded from my network and installed before the thing was allowed to play on the internet, with it's firewall up of course. The first sites it accessed were the appropriate ones to update the said programmes.
If it can be cured by a registry modification then why do the ***dy software writers make it as difficult as this? It would appear that just to ensure that the Acer advert is always uppermost in a punter's mind a whole facility is removed from the standard internet browser. Grrr............

P.P.

Edited to say: No luck I'm afraid chaps, A thorough run of Spybot failed to show up any infections, the tools facility mentioned showed that the home page was not locked, and on checking the registry, the keys indicated do not exist despite extensive use of the search facility even when searching on parts of the strings referred to. The subfolders inter net explorer\control panel (or internet) do not exist in the registry either.
the Acer page however continues to obstinately refuse to allow itself to be deleted or replaced in I.E. 7

P.P.

[BOAC]

Worth running a 'hijack this' (see the sticky) to see what is going on.

[BLUE SKY THINKER]

Try this (registry again I'm afraid) . . . . .

Run > Regedit.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main.
In the 'Main' Folder look for an entry on the right for 'Start Page'; it will probably indicate an Acer website address. Change to about:blank

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
Repeat as above.

[Edit] May have to do likewise here if you find reference to 'Acer': HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main

Reboot.

Select Mrs. P's favourite Homepage in the usual way.

[ZH875]

Do you have anything in the "C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\SIGNUP" folder, which may affect things (Freeserve used to screw my PC up from here).

[CYPR]

ZH875

Did you check the Microsoft Knowledge Base for help? I know its a little long winded however its worth a try as you have a new system that, presumably, hasn't be corrupted. here is the URL

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/320159/en-us?spid=8722&sid=global

I'm still trying to locate my reference material.

Keep us posted.

[P.Pilcher]

Thanks for your further thoughts everybody, I will report back as soon as she goes out again!

P.P.

[P.Pilcher]

Success at last! I got a little worried when I discovered that even regedit was unable to alter the contents of the registry so realised that something must be blocking it. The reason for the problem, I eventually found, was Adwatch. When this active spyware blocker which is supplied with Ad-Aware SE+ was disabled, all problems disappeared!
The annoying thing was that I have used this facility for ages and it seems to do a good job in stopping the various bits of malware which otherwise get into my machine. Furthermore, my daughter purchased an identical Acer a day or so after I bought Mrs. P's. I installed Ad-Aware SE+ with Adwatch on this for her as well and she has no problems at all changing her Internet Explorer home page!

Many thanks again to everybody who kindly made suggestions to sort out my problem.

P.P.