The old thread was locked (as I expected) so I created new topic. Posting from my secondary computer now. The infected computer is being cloned now, I'm restoring the clean image. Fortunately this second machine was turned OFF so the cancer could not spread to it through the LAN. The other computer no longer was mine, it was malware's computer.
During the installation ZoneAlarm popped up and told me that the installer wants to contact something and I denied it as always. The installer froze for about 30 seconds (futile connection attempt). Then it asked to install the Ask cancer, I unchecked all boxes and clicked "Install". ZoneAlarm then notified me that the installer again wants something, I denied it. Installer froze for 30 seconds, then continued and created the cancer.
So there's your bug. Try installing while blocking the connection and see what happens. It WILL infect your computer.
I call all toolbars, etc. as malware. Because that's what its name is. MALWARE. It's all the same.
I tried to uninstall it. Don't really know if it uninstalled. Maybe the uninstaller removed the big tumor, but left smaller ones everywhere. Firefox was completely hosed, it would not even start anymore. IE's search system was utterly unusable. Registry was full of "Ask.com this", "Ask.com that".
So, again, thank you. I might finish by sunday. Three days behind my schedule. Maybe, MAYBE, if I do an all-nighter, I'll get it done by late friday. After cloning I have to thoroughly update the OS, software, apply other updates, reconfigure everything. All that is gone now. Fortunately my files were intact.
