Virtumundo is the name of the company and I would bet a billion tomatoes-in-a-bag that Advirtim has something to do with one of their products.

Anyway... before continuing I do think you have at least two different problems here. The .dlls are one batch of spyware, I suspect they are being blocked right now so you are safe. (Other than the annoying error messages)

The other problem is the "MyWebSearch" thing and one of the things it does is change your homepage like you described.

A lot of people are saying that you can remove MyWebSearch from "add/remove" but a lot of people are also reporting that that isn't working, maybe intentionally (because they don't really want you to uninstall the software).

One of the reasons that Spybot and Adaware can't remove some of these things is because they are usually currently running when you start windows, and things that are running can't be deleted. When you ran SpyBot and Ad-Aware did at some point they tell you to reboot so they could remove the last of the files? (Although even that didn't work totally on the machine I was working on... but its a start).

I think trying "add/remove" again would be a good first thing to try... but you should do a few things first. I found a list of all the things you should add/remove but I want you to try disabling them first.

Open "msconfig" through the "run" dialog like I said before, go to the "startup" tab, and see if you can find "MyWebSearch as one of the startup programs. They are in order that they load, not alphabetical, so you'll have to look carefully. Take the check off anything that says "WebSearch" or "MyWebSearch" or anything similar.

Also uncheck anything that says "Speedbar" or "My Way Speedbar" or "Search Assistant" These are all related things (and one of the pages does say that this can come from SmilieCentral).

Restart your computer. Don't open any browser windows (if any are still opening up, close them) It won't uninstall if there are any browser windows open.

Then do the add/remove and uninstall any or all of these:
# My Web Search (Smiley Central or FWP product as applicable)
# My Way Speedbar (Smiley Central or other FWP as applicable)
# My Way Speedbar (AOL and Yahoo Messengers) (beta users only)
# My Way Speedbar (Outlook, Outlook Express, and IncrediMail)
# Search Assistant - My Way

When you finish that, search for a file named "MWSOEMON.EXE" and delete it. Then restart. See if things are any better.

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Also wanted to check... when you run Spybot or AdAware, do you do an "update" before you run to be sure they are looking for all the latest stuff? If not, try again, it may help... but there are people with uptodate defs that are still having trouble...

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<div class="foot">(Edited by dexter on 08/26/04 11:45 PM.)</div>