I believe that I had Ultimate Defender installed and I think I was pretty successful getting rid of it. One of UD's traits is that it wants to hijack your browser. I think the problems I am having are as a result of having UD on my machine. One file that I had was qewiyrui.exe, which would keep appearing. I was able to get rid of this one for good.

I have a problem where Windows Explorer crashes on startup and wants to send an error report. If I say yes or no, IE still exits basically rendering it useless. Since the Microsoft update wants to use IE, you basically can't do the update on demand. I can use Opera but I still seem to have the hijacking problem.

This is a relatively new machine and I would do a reformat if reqired, but would love not to have to!

Any ideas?

Welcome to BC

What programs/tools did you use to remove Ultimate Defender?

http://www.atribune.org/ccount/click.php?id=4
Please download VundoFix.exe to your desktop.
Double-click VundoFix.exe to run it.
Click the Scan for Vundo button.
Once it's done scanning, click the Remove Vundo button.
You will receive a prompt asking if you want to remove the files, click YES
Once you click yes, your desktop will go blank as it starts removing Vundo.
When completed, it will prompt that it will reboot your computer, click OK.

Note: It is possible that VundoFix encountered a file it could not remove.
In this case, VundoFix will run on reboot, simply follow the above instructions starting from "Click the Scan for Vundo button." when VundoFix appears at reboot.

Post a Hijack This log in the Hijack This Forum by following the directions in the link below if the programs above have not removed ALL malware. DO NOT post the log in this forum.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic34773.html