TechSpot - PC Technology News and Analysis

When I came here a few months back to sort out my "CTRL+ALT+DEL not working" problem, I came across a program that sounded like a good idea. I'm not a techie, but it did something like redirecting various people (such as tradedoubler) to 127.0.0.0. This meant that lots of banner adverts don't appear in your browser, because the link can't be made to their servers

Now I am in the situation that I am trying to earn lots of cashback through Quidco, but whenever I try to click through on Quidco I receive an error message along the lines of "Unable to connect - Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at clkuk.tradedoubler.com."

I am assuming that the program that I found here that blocks banner adverts is the cause, so I have looked in Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel but can't see anything listed that sounds relevant. Can someone please tell me how to sort this problem out?

Thanks

use the following programs for tools:
crap cleaner
spybot search and destroy
ad-aware
and your anti-virus

I've run spybot search and destroy, ad-aware and my anti-virus, as you suggested, but this didn't come up with any results. I'm wondering if I haven't explained my problem very well, as I don't see how that would have helped anyway

I have run a program that I found recommended at this forum. It blocks banner adverts. Now it is blocking Quidco, so I want to uninstall it. It's not listed in add/remove programs

I want to know:
1) What that program is called
2) How I can remove it from my computer

It's not a spyware or virus, it's a program that I ran to block banner adverts, and I found it in these forums (along with a whole host of recommendations on how to make my PC more secure)

Post a HJT log as per these instructions and I`ll see if the programme you`re trying to get rid of shows up.

Regards Howard

Thanks guys

Attached Files

hijackthis.log (7.6 KB, 1 views)

Nothing shows up in your HJT log, though you should have HJT fix the following.

O2 - BHO: (no name) - {7E853D72-626A-48EC-A868-BA8D5E23E045} - (no file)

O3 - Toolbar: (no name) - {BA52B914-B692-46c4-B683-905236F6F655} - (no file)

O4 - HKLM\..\Run: [UpdReg] C:\WINDOWS\UpdReg.EXE

Is the programme you downloaded a browser plugin? If so, check your browsers addons/plugins.

Regards Howard

Well, thanks for checking it over, I'll correct those things you've pointed out

I'll also check through my Firefox extensions

There is nothing wrong at all. So he doesn't have anything bad to remove. Everything is behaving as expected.

Whatever firefox extention (likely Adblock) you have blocking ads just needs you to make an exception for clkuk.tradedoubler.com

I wasn`t looking for anything bad, merely which programme he was talking about. Obviously I didn`t find anything related to popup blockers in his HJT log and that`s when I suggested he check his browser addons.

Regards Howard

Turned out to be a file called HOSTS which I had downloaded for free from http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\etc\hosts

Thanks for all the help anyway, guys, it is much appreciated, and I've removed a few things which HJT highlighted as well thanks to you, so that's a bonus

That`s good news and thanks for letting us know.

Regards Howard