What is About:blank?

Question

same question..

you mentioned 'hijack' on your computer show 2/5. i think thats what happened to my computer. i get about:blank as my home page, i can scroll down to get to my yahoo page. WHen i try to get on to 1) my school website 2) my email- from my yahoo page 3) espn.com. the about:blank page takes over..all my other sites are fine..i dont know why/how that happens and it only happens on my home computer, if i get on another computer i am fine....i was on komando.com and they said i have a 'trojan'..ok whats that?? a friend told me to put on lavasoft.com and i did, didnt work, i put on spyboxsearchanddestroy.com and no help..what now?? thank you tony hess.....602-274-6035

Answer

This question was answered on April 16, 2006. Much of the information contained herein may have changed since posting.

What you have encountered is a really nasty program called Cool Web Search. This program was designed to force you on to the about:blank page because the designer gets money by forcing you to hit the site. This is a very difficult program to get rid of. There are programs out there that will remove the program for you but they may require you to buy the program. You can remove it manually using the instructions on this site http://www.pchell.com/support/aboutblank.shtml, but be very very careful. Any mistakes made in your registry could cause major problems. If you have a program like Symantic's Internet Security program, you may want to run it to see if that will remove it before shelling out money for more software.

Author

Posted by Aaron of Chandler-Gilbert Community College on April 16, 2006