Hi David Morgan & Don,
In the hopes of reducing confusion I’ll try to answer you both at the same
time. I tried setting homepage to, Use Current, Use Default, Use Blank or
inserting Yahoo or whatever and no change would stick. Clicking “Apply” or
“OK” after a change made no difference. We are making headway as with your
combined help we might have discovered the what, and maybe the how. I am
using Spybot and Ad-Aware se Pro with the latest updates. I ran both and
they found nothing of importance. I also did total clean up of all cookies
and temp files and ran scanreg/fix/opt. I tried startup in Safe Mode
changed address to
http://my.att.net but the wrong address returned with
the next w98 startup, however, Ad-Watch caught:
Ad-Watch Event Log
3/21/08 3:27:22 PM - Registry modification detected
Root: HKEY_CURRENT_USER
Key: Software\Microsoft\internet Explorer\Main
Value: Start Page
Data:
http://www.att.net/
New Data:
http://my.att.net
The registry Start Page showed the new address
http://my.att.net but when
I
re-opened IE I got that same AT&T message, again. Returning to the
registry
Start Page it had changed back to the original setting
http://www.att.net
apparently you are correct David, AT&T implanted a program, which is
altering the registry. And as you indicated the web page is hi-jacked
because the top of page always shows: “AT&T Microsoft Internet Explorer.”
In Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, there is program (ATT
–AACE) that I did not knowingly install. Doing a “Find File or Folders”
ATT
–AACE contains at least one dll and a couple of exe. A search of the
Internet did not find that program.
I’ve been at this all day and I’m tired, so with a fresh start in the AM
(unless the wife has other plans) I will delete that program, hopefully
clean out the remnants and get back to you with the results. Thank you for
sticking with me through this problem.
Sudy Nim
Don Varnau said:
Hi,
If you set your homepage to "Use Blank" or something else like Yahoo or
Google, does that change stick?
These and other third-party programs can lock the IE homepage. Examine
the
settings of security/privacy/antispyware programs for the option to lock
homepage, lock IE control panel, lock IE settings, etc.
Spybot (Advanced Mode) Tools> IE Tweaks
Spybot- Teatimer
Ad-aware Pro
Norton AV 2006 (Web Browsing > Spyware protection)
McAfee AV or Antispyware
Spyware Blaster
Spysweeper
Zone Alarm- free and pro.
If you don't wish to dig through settings of whichever security/privacy
programs you have installed, you may be able to startup in Safe Mode,
change the homepage then restart the computer. That won't always work- an
earlier version of Zone Alarm free had to be uninstalled.
Hope this helps,
Don
[MS MVP- IE]
Sudy Nim said:
My server is sending me this notice:
The AT&T Internet Service Home page URL has changed.
Please update your Internet Browser Home Page or Favorites immediately.
Because w98se is not supported by AT&T this change can not be made
regardless of my attempts. Is there a way I can block this notice that
prevents my home page from opening? TIA