Howdy all,
I caught this same bug today. Spent from 11:45am to 10pm going through the motions of cleaning my machine. AND thanks to this site and this thread, it looks okay now.
First though, Norton Anti-Virus with current updated definitions did not stop this bug. I did receive a warning by NAV but by then the damage was done.
My hompage was hijacked and even locking the homepage changes in Spybot S&D would not keep it from rolling back to their search page as my homepage.
During the bug, I had problems viewing webpages at symantec and windowsupdate.microsoft.com. Further, I had problems searching for web pages that said anything about "inetm". In fact, this PC Tech thread failed to load until I went back and forward a few times. I wonder if this is because it put it's own search engine header on webpages I was viewing. Remarkably though, it was selective and did not do _every_ webpage I visited.
The way I did it... I drive an XP SP1 with IE6. The following is probably the model of overkill but here goes...
#1. Notepad is still in the windows folder. This bug is copies the original Notepad.exe to Notepad.exe.bak. I just renamed it back.
#2. I was unable to delete c:\windows\inetm\ folder until I ran Security Task Manager. THANKS FOR THAT IDEA. I quarantined the xpsystem "services" file.
#3. I dumped my internet cache.
#4. I used Norton Cleansweep to remove all extraneous files.
#5. I deleted EVERY comment in my registry that had "inetm" as a value. Just do a search with regedit and DON'T delete inetmeeting stuff.
#6. THEN rebooted in safemode.
#7. I deleted c:\windows\inetm folder.
#8. Reboot Normal and much happier surfer.
THE END
P.S. I did not see the files (...\services\Y.exe or ...\services\1.00.07.dll)that kephyr.com listed as causes. Although, ...\services\1.00.04.dll was in my inetm folder.
THANKS to this thread for a great running commentary on this pest. I guess I'm lucky to be able to personally recognize weird entries in my running processes and msconfig lines. So, that's how I found PC Techforums.
Great work Cactus, Brad, and PCguy for outstanding help for lilpinkflower AND me!
Hey, if it was an XP or IE exploit using ActiveX and NAV saw it then why did it not stop it? Is there a place to post bugs?
Vaya con Dios,
Chris H.
Atlanta
http://www.gapaintball2.com
p.s. Jesus is coming, look busy.