Comet Curser

[Fingers]

DANG IT!!! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif
If I had physical access to the kind of people who design and put this garbage on the web... I'D RING THEIR LOUSY NECKS!!!
How do I get rid of this thing?

I just used Google to search for a topic and while I was checking out one of the links, ZoneAlarm popped up and asked me if I wanted to allow cometcurser.exe to connect to the internet. Of course I said "NO", but I realized the mere presence of that alert meant that cometcurser.exe was already on my hard drive. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif I looked on the task bar and sure enough, Comet Cursor is in the tray http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

I'd post the geocities site that sneaked the CometCursor program onto my computer, but I don't want anyone else to get "hit".

I thought I had my IE security set high enough to stop this kind of ****. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif

Fingers, mad enough to spit

[RobRich]

Adaware should take care of your problem. Check this out:

http://www.sysopt.com/articles/freesecurity/index3.html

Comet Cursor is more than just a annoyance, it is actually a spyware tracking package. Definitely not something I would ever want to install. For future protection, change your browser settings to prompt for installation of new scripts or programs, esp. of the ActiveX variety for IE.

Hope this helps,
Robert Richmond

[Imperion1]

Yep, I've had that happen before. Removed comet cursor and searched through regedit to get rid of any crud it left behind.

[NDC]

You can just go to add/remove program and remove it. That's what I did when some site automatically loaded it on my system...

[Fingers]

Thanks for the quick response, guys.

I've also got "new" desktop and Start Menu shortcuts to Comet Cursor, and also 2 entries in "Add/Remove Programs, so should I uninstall Comet Cursor first, or just kill it with Adaware?

I run Adaware about once a month, but I've never had any spyware before.

I'm sitting here with my mouse hoving over the shortcut to launch Adaware... waiting for the proper removal procedure. If CometCursor so much as flinchs... I'll kill it http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif

[This message has been edited by Fingers (edited 07-05-2001).]

[S.D.Willie]

add/remove it and the shorcuts should be removed automatically. if not its safe to manually remove them anyhow.
adaware is a good thing to have.
death to comet cursor and spyware everywhere.

SD

[Fingers]

Well, at least their uninstall program works better than most... if that's saying anything?

Summary;
The CometCursor uninstaller removed all but 3 of the 31 related entries in my registry (2 of the 3 are history stores, so I was really only concerned about 1 of them). It also removed the shortcuts and the ActiveX control, but it left an empty "Comet" folder in "C:\Program Files"

Norton WinDoctor found no "orphans" in the registry either.

As a final check, I ran Adaware and it found 3 spyware references to Comet Cursor... 1 folder, 1 registry entry, and 1 file.

I'm happy to be rid of the parasite, but I'm also disappointed that I can no longer brag that I have NEVER fallen the victim to an internet virus or spyware program. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/frown.gif


Thanks for the help guys http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

PS. It apparently "got in" because I had Download signed ActiveX controls enabled. Thanks for the tip Rob.

[This message has been edited by Fingers (edited 07-05-2001).]