How I got rid of my nasty browser hijacker...3 programs.
In a way I am writing this in support of one program. I was told in one post it was not a real program, and there was much criticism of it.
Trojan Killer paid version was about 40 dollars plus 10 for support online. Trust me when your computer is as infected as mine was so quickly, you need a paid program. The free ones find the problems but it takes the paid ones to correct them. Trojan Killer support stuck with me all day and mostly all night. By the end of a day and a half, the hijacker was gone. However I could tell something remained on my computer that attracted Malware. Scanned again they got it.
I forgot to leave it running in protection mode for several hours, and a few other things got installed.
I found very good reviews despite what was said to me in this forum. Links.
http://download.cnet.com/Trojan-Killer/3000-8022_4-10755236.html
http://trojan-killer.en.softonic.com/comments
And it is listed at Major Geeks as well. No reviews yet that I can see.
They really stuck with me until it was done.
I wanted another opinion, so downloaded free version of Malwarebytes. It found 4 items.
Still felt like something was there.
Got the $24 dollar paid for version of Trojan Remover, which I remember from when the UK developer Nigel Thomas was trying to get a foothold here. Super support back then, maybe 2000. He personally took interest in his customers, we emailed for several years.
It is a great program, simple to use. I chose to have it scan files that were malware and/or not found...such as a file that had no program connected to it. It found one more dangerous one.
I think fair is fair when programs are condemned roundly online without considering they have worked well for others. Trojan Killer saved my computer. There was not a lot of time to make decisions as there was a lot of phone home stuff. I got lucky.
I leave Trojan Killer in protection mode along with Norton Internet Security. It is a good program but NIS doesn't do Trojans well.
I think we should be careful telling people they made the wrong decision on programs without indisputable proof.
= new reply since forum marked as read
I'm a veteran of malware invasions. 
Hopefully I've learned how to cure them and try to avoid them if at all possible.
Neither is Chrome or IE (especially not IE).
The reason for this is that most sites today use AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) intrinsically to their design. The primary benefit to it is that with AJAX you can design a site which only refreshes specific content in the pages, rather than reloading the whole thing. Also, client-side execution of Javascript allows pages to operate with a smoother character than would otherwise be possible. Without SOME script execution, most sites these days are practically inoperable or at least seriously hobbled.
Browsers deal with this through script blocking capability, but it's often all or nothing for any given page. Problem is, cross-site scripting (XSS) is a very common method of getting around this. By injecting a bad script into a linking page from another site, most browsers will let this through when the page you are trying to load is whitelisted.
Firefox has an add-on developed for it called NoScript. It allows you to selectively allow you to whitelist scripting for each domain being accessed on a page. It takes a bit of time to get used to using it, but I haven't had anything infect my machine since I started using it. Even with this I still run an AV, just to be on the safe side. I believe Chrome has similar add-ons.
I don't know if extensions are even possible with IE (except for toolbars, of course 
), but the security and extensibility model for it is still broken, and I'd just give up using that if you can. If you can't, don't use it to browse blind, always see if you can use FF or Chrome before resorting to it.
