[paulduggan]

I didn't experience the searchbar problem but a couple of days ago I started to see popup windows appearing that were serving adverts. The popups were not connected to IE and had a title that read something like 'These ads have no relevance to the websites you are viewing' along with the figure silhouette. After a bit of invesitgation I found that the windows belonged to a process connected to switpa.exe. I had a look at the properties of this exe and it mentioned 'OfferAgent'. Does this mean anything to anyone?
So I ran an Adaware scan and that didn't chase it off so I had a look through the registry and, apart from a key to start that thing off at windows startup and a few other bits and pieces I saw that there was an Uninstall entry. I checked in Add/Remove Programs and sure enough there was an entry for OfferAgent. I used this to remove the program and it does seem to be genuinely gone now so I would recommend this as the best way to get rid of it.
I don't know where it came from though and I'm more than a bit miffed that there was no warning/option to not install but at least there is a working uninstall (unusually for this type of thing I guess). It's a shame to see that companies like Dell are using this kind of method to force their adverts on people who don't want them, don't get the option to say 'no' and many of whom will be left not knowing how to get rid of them.
Is there a way of aleting the makers of AdAware to new nasties like this?

 

[khazars]

could you stsrt your own thread, post a hijack this log, mkae sure to save hijack this to it's own folder such as C:\ hijack this

 

[paulduggan]

Sorry. I just did a web search (and a Google - no results) on switpa.exe to see if anyone else knew or had encountered this thing before. I found this thread and just decided to post what I knew about it. I thought the uninstall information might be useful.
I have no idea what HijackThis is and in any case I no longer have the offending software on my PC and I've got no idea where I picked it up from.
I suspect that it's got something to do with these people though.

 

[cybertech]

Hi paulduggan, Welcome to TSG!!

I've split your post into a new thread so please continue here.

Create a permanent folder on your hard drive for Hijackthis, like My Documents\HJT
Click on this link: http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/files/HijackThis.exe and "Save" hijackthis to the folder you have created.

Double click on the program to run hijackthis, click "scan" then click on "Save Log".

Post a copy back here and someone will be happy to review it.

Don't make any changes until instructed to do so.