Removing about:blank Homepage Hijacker 23 Feb. 2005
 
 
 Summary
Presented below are several tools and methods used to remove the about:blank homepage hijacker. 
 
Credit:
The thorough step-by-step and example was taken from Time2Early post in
www.computercops.biz 
 
 Details
Vulnerable Systems:
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer

Homepage hijackers are an effect caused by some toolbar programs, Trojans or malware. The hostile application changes the default homepage of Internet Explorer to something undesired and does not allow the user to set the homepage.

Below are several tools which can be used to find and remove malware that causes the effect. Presented here is also a manual step-by-step method of removing more persistent homepage hijackers. Please reboot the machine after each step before checking if the removal was successful.

Spyware / Trojan removal tools:
Spybot - Search & Destroy can detect and remove spyware of different kinds from your computer. Spyware is a relatively new kind of threat that common anti-virus applications do not yet cover. If you see new toolbars in your Internet Explorer that you didn't intentionally install, if your browser crashes, or if you browser start page has changed without your knowing, you most probably have spyware.

CWShredder - A general homepage hijackers detector and remover. Initially based on the article Hijacked!, but expanded with almost a dozen other checks against hijacker tricks. It is continually updated to detect and remove new hijacks.