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[ZacVegas]

Morning people, I've got a problem with my laptop. I can't change my homepage, I've gone into the Internet options menu to change it but its not working. Is there a computer whizz out there that can help please?

[AndyRoid]

What happens when you try to change it?

[ZacVegas]

I type in the web address I want to have as my homepage and when I click on the apply box the web address I typed in turns blue, like when you double click on it to delete it or overwrite it

[AndyRoid]

What happens if you reset IE to it's default settings?

Default settings are found under the Advanced tab.

[ZacVegas]

reset ie settings and restarted the laptop, still doing the same if I try to change the homepage

[AndyRoid]

What address does it default to at the moment?

[martin42]

It would be the porn site he looks at 

[ZacVegas]

My mrs restored the laptop to an earlier point and its working ok now. My mrs was trying to find a site to download movies and that's when it went tits up. Nothing to do with porn........this time

[dbug]

Sounds like something "altered" your hosts file.

If Win7, go to  %WinDir%\System32\Drivers\Etc and select the Hosts file, open it with notepad.

Delete all content and copy and paste the following . . .

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
#       127.0.0.1       localhost
#       ::1             localhost

Save file (make sure saved as hosts without a file extension) - job done

[TheBoy]

My mrs restored the laptop to an earlier point and its working ok now. My mrs was trying to find a site to download movies and that's when it went tits up. Nothing to do with porn........this time

Run a full AV, Malware and rootkit scan on that. I suspected it had been compromised when I saw the thread earlier, having seen how it happened, I'm more convinced....

[Andy H]

Sounds like something "altered" your hosts file.

If Win7, go to  %WinDir%\System32\Drivers\Etc and select the Hosts file, open it with notepad.

Delete all content and copy and paste the following . . .

# Copyright (c) 1993-2006 Microsoft Corp.
#
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
#
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
#
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
#
# For example:
#
#      102.54.94.97     rhino.acme.com          # source server
#       38.25.63.10     x.acme.com              # x client host

# localhost name resolution is handle within DNS itself.
#       127.0.0.1       localhost
#       ::1             localhost

Save file (make sure saved as hosts without a file extension) - job done

Is that the full hosts file?

All the entries appear to be rem'd out so it won't actually do anything (but that might be the desired behaviour)

[dbug]

Thats correct - look at your own hosts file

Its effectively empty but can be mod'd/added to though, and that can be the problem