After a few hours of using the internet I found the Internet Explorer home page had defaulted to: www.safetyuptodate.net . This website seems to warn me about malware, and then advises me to purchase all sorts of software to remove such threats. In addition, a dialogue box appears over the top of this page advising the computer is infected with the W32.Myzor.FK@yf virus. I have run McAfee Antivirus and removed a virus called ‘Puper’. In addition, I have also run various anti-spyware programs including McAfee, Trend Micro, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy, and Microsoft. These have removed some spyware, although the home page still remains unchanged. How can I reclaim the home page for good?

First let me say you have done all the correct things. You have realised the newly set Internet Explorer home page which is advertising products to remove spyware from your computer is bogus. This is sometimes quite difficult, since it is difficult to tell whether the site is legitimate or not. As a rule of thumb, any site which advertises products to you unsolicited is likely to be suspicious, and in this case the site is definitely bogus. The message about being infected with the W32.Myzor.FK@yf virus could be legitimate or bogus, as I have found conflicting reports about the authenticity of this message when researching your question on the internet. That said, this message does provide a useful piece of information. When researching the W32.Myzor.FK@yf virus I found this can be responsible for hijacking the Internet Explorer homepage and defaulting the home page to www.safetyuptodate.net (amongst other possible pages). Interestingly enough, the ‘Puper’ virus which McAfee was able to remove from your computer seems to be related to these as well. Therefore, this provides us with a good starting point for removing this threat from your computer. Since automated utilities have been unable to remove this threat from your computer, you may need to complete a manual removal. This is quite tricky, so before proceeding I strongly suggest you backup any important data you wish to keep in case things go badly and you need to reinstall Windows. While this is unlikely, when fiddling around with Windows in this respect you should be prepared just in case!

Once you have backed-up any important data on your computer, we can commence the removal process. Due to space constraints, I cannot publish comprehensive instructions in this column. However, there are excellent instructions contained in a forum post at: http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/370698 . Try following the instructions contained there to see whether you are able to resolve the issue. Should you require any further guidance, please contact me again.