This morning when I fired up my Sony laptop this morning it had been taken over by something called Second Thought and mPCsearch. The result was constant pop-ups, one on top of the other. I ran Norton and the other spyware programs and got rid of about 90% of the pop-ups and junk. The desktop still has the Second Thought and the mPCsearch icons on it even though I can't find it in the program list. Any ideas? Mercedes Shop is being interrupted, and I can't stand it!
I have a Sony VAIO running XP.

Steve

Couldn't find anything on mPCsearch. Here are the Second thought removal instructions. They are pretty involved:

http://www.iamnotageek.com/a/371-p1.php

KV,
Often, others are praised for being on this site, as they should be.
I think some folks take you for granted and they shouldn't.
That was a quick reply.
Though the PC problem isn't mine, I appreciate how quick you were to respond.
This place is the best and people like you who are so willing to really help make it so.

I'll go wipe my nose now.

__________________
85' 300D No inspection, No registration fees, Cheap insurance
"If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits 88 miles per hour, you're going to see some serious %$&^."

Hey guys,

Thanks for the replies. If someone wants a house to be dismantled and put back together again, or four star catering for a hundred done, or your
vintage BMW fixed, call me. But I don't speak computerese, so when you say
"involved" when referring to a computer fix, you might as well say that I have to swim across the Atlantic to get my car keys--not that I'm being disrespectful, but you computer guys really do have your own language that no one else understands. I clicked on the link and read all the info and it was
like Greek but with no dictionary. I did discover that I also have Virtual Bouncer too. Went through Norton, AdAware, Spybot etc...all of which I had to pay for and still I have this undesired parasite extorting me. I guess its
time to back to school. I have to say that I kind of admire the people who understand this stuff.

Steve

Good products to get, and all have free versions:
Spybot Search and Destroy
Ad-aware
AVG antivirus

Then, get Firefox -- learn it, live it, and dump Internet Explorer.

Steve, I'm not sure why you had to pay for Spybot or Ad-aware, nor why they didn't work in this case. You may have something new and especially nasty. Try the AVG product before you give up.

Yes and run all of those in safe mode.

yes run spybot and adaware. make sure you update their definitions after installing before.

Alon

__________________
'92 300CE - Sold
2004 C240 - 744 - C7 Wheels - Android Radio
2002 C320 - 816 - Sport Wagon

i had the same browser takeover situation , ran a lot of anti spyware etc but finally the only one that could get rid of it was

hijack this

http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/

be fully aware what you are deleting though with this program....

__________________
1984 300D Turbo - 231k....totalled 11/30/07 RIP

OK, thanks for the suggestions. I ran SpyBot, AdAware, Norton and Housecall
all in Safe Mode and got many issues resolved. This morning I'm still getting
some banners eventhough Virtual Bouncer is no longer on my hard drive.
I'll keep at it 'till it is cleaned up fully.
There ought to be a law against people like Virtual Bouncer...

Steve