lol, side note ive been a member fr over a year and im still a newbie. alright its search assistant and all the crap that comes with it. ive done the registry key deleting and the prefetch deleting. sorta worked. the proggies ive used are systeminternals ntregmon, adaware, spysweeper and panda antivirus. all updated. my home page keeps getting changed from blank to searportal.info and i get a header that attaches itself to everypage i view in explorer from v73.us. ive gone to both sites and removed accordingly, well the searchportal i did. the v73 said the only way to delete was to use a sister program( i wasnt born yesterday). webrebates was another program that kept getting reistalled and so was randreco and web specials. ive gotten rid of the header problem for now but my homepage keeps getting changed and i cant remember the 3 websites but one is a casino website another is some conneyc porn site (never been there) and the 3rd doesnt ever load. i just recently deleted all of it again and so far only my home page has been changed . im playing the waiting game to see if the websites popup again and if the anti popupblocker ets reinstalled. sorry its jumbled and mushed all together, to much caffeine lol. all i know is ive been battling this for monthes now and if it continues ill take matters further (the websites wont like it). ill keep all posted and i hope all the new info is usefull.