I have dedicated the last few days of my life in trying to scrub this win 98 SE of the infestation on my machine. So far my efforts have failed. I have tried some of the suggestions per the posts on this site and no luck. (1)I bought expensive software called adwareaway and another called ad-awareSE by lavausa by I still have my uninvited guests: about blank; shopping wizard; search extender; home search extender. Now they are demanding driver's licenses (just kidding).

I found one area on this site that was going to give me a free download of what I hear is a good package...something eliminator - and I wouldnt have to pay if I only filled out my personal info and let them romance me to buy one of their products. But ,after giving them the info I lost connection and now cant find the doorway again. Pissed me off.

Of course, another computer BB said they gave the highest rating to a software from Aluriasoftware (who will be the blocker for AOL).

Can anyone give me the straight scoop on what to do and what magic bullet to use?

Well I just spent about 1-2 hours once more trying to get that Ad-aware SE software to do the job in deporting the aliens from my computer. To say that that program is user-unfriendly and confusing would be an understatement. I was clicking on every button possible(with no responses)just to get the thing to move. Then, when it showed that it did uncover some critters, there was no delete button to zap them..I settled for the quarantine button....from there, I just played it by ear.

But guess what girls and boys, when I finally re- booted and checked out the situation, PTL those critters were finally gone. I feel reborn again. The rush of success is heady stuff. Im almost moved to buy drinks for the house..NOTE I said "almost".

I now only have one other miracle to produce. One of those malwares turned all my word documents(in" my documents") into a bunch of Ys and boxes. A real bummer. But after I fiddled around with those documents and went to" file "and clicked "preview" I discovered that 6 or 7 pages away fragmented within those Ys and boxes were the texts of those documents. I will have to retype all of them but it would have been a real loss to lose the information in same. Do any of you know of some way to restore them to original form?????

You refer to Adware Away that you purchased. A quick look at their site revealed this info:

"How to get a customized remover ?
You need to do a Global Scan first, then submit the log file to us via email, after we receive your log file, we will customize a remover for you. We will give priority to our registered users. So if you are a registered user, please check 'I am a registered user' option when you submit your log file."

It sounds like their support may be able to help in this instance.

There is a good tutorial here at BC on using Ad-AwareSe:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial48.html

And there is also a lot of instructions in the application's HELP file that is fairly straightforward. I think you will find the method to delete items that it quarantines in one of these two places.
Regards,
John