Well my mom brought her laptop over to my workplace for me to fix, turns out some nasty adware got installed on there. When I looked at the IE homepage it was greyed out so that it couldn't be edited. The only way to edit it would be to re-enable it, edit it, then lock it again (if you want to).

The thing that got to me is, her homepage was locked at "searchexe.com" which she didn't set (nor would she). I went and looked for instructions on the web and came up with this little trick of locking your IE homepage so that it can't be hijacked, even by you (unless you unlock it).

Quick Steps:
1. Open Regedit (start -> run -> regedit).
2. You'll need to update this in two locations.
Navigate to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel

In both of the locations you'll need to add:
"HomePage"=dword:00000001

Now, if you go and right click "internet explorer" and choose "properties" you'll see that you cannot edit (or change) your homepage. To re-enable that you'd change the dword above to: 00000000

Good tip. I have had my homepage changed before and it sux. I have allways been able to change it back, but once had something I couldn't kill and I would edit the home page. Only fo have it auto change back. Thankx for the tip.

on my computer i have something like that but evey time i go on my computer the next day after i chang the home page to somthing i want it changes back to this stupid hot-search.com and i try to change it over and over but it goes back to the same Hot search deal so what should i do in this matter

i dont know if i have a virus or adawar or anything cause i use macafeevirus scan and all that other stuff so i dont know what wouldcause this

Prolly some kind of spy- or ad-ware. Virus scanners don't detect that sort of thing. Have fun with it

It's adware; You'll need to update your homepage then lock your toolbar and restart to see if it changes it back again. I also reccommend running SpyBot Search and Destry to see if it can find anything.

spybot sucks.. I like Ad-Aware. Oh, and try "Hijack This"(it's a program). I've never tried it, but apparently it works well..

I've tried Ad-Ware and Hijack This; Spybot is still my favorite

You're all wrong. I have had tons of service calls and even did a test with the same spyware/adware on PCs. You need to have more than one, to actually get all the spyware covered.

In my experiance Adware and Hijack tihs are pieces of shit; i've used them both. Spybot is the onlyone that actually does what it was made to do in my experiances troubleshooting pc's; but yes it's dobutful it'd have every spyware listed.

How come I dont have this directorty?

Internet Explorer\Control Panel

I can get to "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft" but there is no internet explorer. Can I make the branch?

If it's WinXP you can make the branch; this mod is only for XP (both Home/Pro).

So what do I put in the key. Do I have to put in any numbers and values cause I dont know any. Or are they just randomly picked when you install the os meaning I just make up shit?
Ive never done this before so should I be screwing with the registry like this... i dont think so. I really dont have much trouble with the home page thing anywayz.

I had that same problem i just ran adware then spybot and it cleared up the problem but after i installed adware i kept getting iexplore errors and i removed adware and it never happened again so i think adware has a few bugs that need to b worked out.

I never liked Adware; it's far too in debth to have a newb like my mother do removal; however spybot works quite easy for newbs and suprisingly my mother can even do it lol