Free your computer of home page hijackers

Recently I received a question from a reader who had a bizarre thing happen whenever he opened a link in his browser. The page opened but would immediately be covered by a blank page called “about:blank.” He wasn’t able to close this blank page, although it could be minimized.

Unfortunately, this problem is not unusual. It’s a type of adware or spyware referred to as “home page hijacking.” In some cases, the spyware takes over your start page, and in others it puts up this bogus about:blank page. If you already have adware/spyware software, you might want to run that first and see if it fixes the problem.

Unfortunately, not all virus or adware removal software is particularly good at detecting every type of adware or spyware. More recent versions tend to do better, but as with virus software, it’s a losing battle. As soon as the software vendors write a fix, the malware people create a new variant.

A couple of downloadable products often mentioned for spyware removal are AdAware from Lavasoft ( http://www.lavasoftusa.com) and Spybot Search and Destroy ( http://www.safer-networking.org). Particularly stubborn about:blank problems may be remedied by running a program called CWShredder ( http://www.majorgeeks.com) or other programs that focus on that particular brand of spyware.

To clean a computer of particularly noxious spyware, you may need to take the computer in for professional servicing.