My Life As A Middle Child - Putting Together The Pieces

Be Careful... not everyone plays nice in cyber world

What the, how the, son of a, Rasen frazen, %*$(%^#)%$)#*a#$%$#(^%*. And just how was your day? I am so glad that you had a wonderful Friday. Now you must suffer through mine… ah ah ah, don’t click on the X. Misery loves company and who knows; just maybe this information will help you sometime in the future.

First let me start by saying I REALLY HATE Spammers, Hi-Jackers, Spyware, Adware and all of the other really mean despicable people and programs out there in the cyber world that make our lives miserable.

Earlier this week, I was minding my own business blogging. OK, I was really reading other people’s blogs, but that’s not a crime, that what the blog world is for. Right??? Well while clicking on Next Blog (as if I don’t already have too many that I read) I started getting pop-ups on my computer. (Yes, I have a pop-up blocker and it is turned on, I have anti-virus software and I have a firewall.) I immediately donned my SpyQueen persona and closed the pop-up window (always close pop-up windows using Alt F4 as clicking on NO lets the slime bucket on the other end know they hit a valid address) got out of the internet and started running my adware and spyware tools. What I found was EliteBar, the new vain of my existence. I deleted EliteBar using Ad-Aware, Spybot and CWShredder. I also checked my program files and deleted it from there. Ahhhhhhh, life was good again and I was able to return resume communicating with my friends in the blog world.

Then, last night when on my computer, what should appear… Pop-Ups. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Well SpyQueen was not about to be beaten, so, once again I ran all of the tools that I had run the other night, then ran Hijack This (WARNING: You must be VERY CAREFUL when using this program as you can actually del files you need) and then ran a virus scan. All of the programs found my new arch enemy EliteBar and deleted it. I felt better, shut down the computer and went to bed.

Today, they decided to close the office at 3:00, so I actually got off work early (3:25… come on, you really didn’t think I would get out of there at 3:00 did ya?) I came home and booted up my computer as it was time for Stuff Portrait Friday. By the time I had logged onto the internet, pop-ups were flying at me left and right. Alright, this is WAR! (If you didn’t know it before, I am a little OCD and I will take on almost any challenge and I do not stop until I win and I will win.) So, I searched Google again on EliteBar and really didn’t find any additional info than what I already had. So, I ran all of the same cleanup tools I had run the night before, only this time before telling them to fix the problem, I copied down the object file # for the registry. I then went into the registry, found the item and deleted it (WARNING: DO NOT try this at home unless you are sure of what you are doing as you may delete a file your system needs!) 2 minutes later… you guessed it, more pop-ups. I checked the registry and the files I had deleted were back and had even more files were added to it. OK, to finish this off, let me tell you that I have spent a large portion of my evening on Google and spyware websites (Don't you just love the fact that a lot of them will let you run a scan on your system, will find items and then tell you to del the items, you must register and give them $. Also, when you try to find the object file # in your registry that they show on their scan, they can’t be found.) trying to get rid of this Rat Bastard (a name I normally reserve for use only when speaking about the ex-husband) EliteBar. I remember a conversation I had a few weeks with the new guy at work and he was saying the Microsoft has a new Spyware tool. I didn’t use this at first, as it is still in Beta. But then I thought, what the hey, it certainly couldn’t make this any worse, so I downloaded and ran it. Wow, the files it found were unbelievable. After deleting them, I went out to check for new postings and 5 minutes later, the pop-ups from hell were back. I went back into the Microsoft AntiSpyware tool, went into the scan options and told it to do a deep scanning. It found more versions of the Evil Nemesis called EliteBar. I then deleted these versions as well and as of 11:50 tonight, I am pop-up free. SpyQueen is the reigning champ!!! YIPPEE KIYAA.

Sorry if I was rambling, but I am tired and worn out. On a bright night, Friday Night is always Doodlebug Night and since her parents went out I watched her all evening. (OK, really no different then when they are here.) Yes, I took off the spyqueen hat for several hours and put on the KGrams hat. I like the KGrams hat much better.

So, I guess I won’t be joining in on Stuff Portrait Friday, as it’s already Saturday. Good morning and good night, I think it’s time for me to go to bed!

Pieces being sorted by KGrams at 7/02/2005 01:27:00 AM