Frustrated on LI!

[j1aybird]

Hi Everyone!
I seem to spend an INCREDIBLE amount of time running scans for spyware and viruses, and yet my computers do not run properly. I run Microsoft Anti-spyware nightly, Ad-Aware regularly and have AVG freeware installed. Here are just 2 of my current issues:
1- When I enter certain URL's into IE, the entry comes back with '/?%20' inserted into the url and then the page can't be found. Does anyone have any clues as to what this is about? and how to get rid of it? For example http://www.url.com comes back as http:///? www.url.com.
2 - I cannot find the Giant anti-spyware in my list of programs but it is installed on my computer (I can find the files in program files in Windows explorer) but the system won't allow me to delete them. I can see the processes running but I don't know how to uninstall this product. I think it might be conflicting with the other things I have installed.

I would gladly pay someone to come and 'fix' my computers but I know that within a few days they will be bogged down with all sorts of junk again. What do people do to overcome this? I listen to others out there saying that they have to do a system restore on their PC's frequently. Every day is an adventure!

 

[phreakwars]

what are the process names ??

The solution is to delete/move the .DLL files that are probably loading this program up, THEN reboot so that the machione is running WITHOUT the process in question loaded. Then you should be able to delete it.

There are different methods for doing this correctly, but first its imortant to know WHAT this program is.

And on a side not, I will guess that the process you see is a dummy app created by the original program.
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[j1aybird]

Thank you so much for your reply. The 2 processes I see running are gcasDtServ.exe and gcasServ.exe and I see these 2 programs in Program Files. When you say remove the .dll files - there are a number of .dll files in the Giant AntiSpyware folder - which ones should be deleted? And do you mean just delete them in Windows explorer?

Joan

 

[phreakwars]

OK, heres what you can try first.

Goto the START menu, then RUN and type: MSCONFIG

Next goto the STARTUP tab and either both or 1 of these programs will be listed. UNCHECK it from startup (while your at it, uncheck anything you really don't need at startup as well, it will speed your boot time), then REBOOT your PC, you should be able to now delete the folder that the program is in, once you have deleted that folder THEN run Ad-Aware on it to clean out any remaining registry entrys.

If this doesn't work, come back, and we'll try another approach.
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[j1aybird]

Hello again! Well that worked and I was able to delete Giant. The interesting thing is that the service actually turned out to be attached to Microsoft AntiSpyware but I unchecked it from Msconfig and was able to delete the Giant folder. There is actually another gcasServ.exe in the Microsoft AntiSpyware folder. Perhaps they were stepping on each other.

Anyway THANKS!!

Any advice with my first problem?

Joan

 

[phreakwars]

To fix that problem, navigate to:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc and there you will see a file called "HOSTS".

Delete this file and try surfing again.

If this does not fix the problem download spybot search and destroy, that should change it back to normal too.

I would bet netscape navigator/firefox would work fine, its just IE that is effected.
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