My mother is having problems with her pc. She had ISTbar on her PC and I don’t know if that’s gone or not. We downloaded hijackthis and went through that procedure and deleted the nasty stuff…not deleted any bigpond stuff etc. Her computer will now dial in and connect to the internet, but won’t bring up any pages at all. She’s using Windows 98. I don’t know if Istbar causes many problems. I can’t find a winsock.dll file - might this be the problem?
Thanks for any help.
Answers, info and removal tool: http://sarc.com/avcenter/venc/data/adware.istbar.html
So you think the istbar is why the internet is not connecting…well it’s connecting but can’t open anything
Did you run the removal tool? Did it report anything?
Have you tried repairing Windows through the installation CD and/or WindowsUpdate? Maybe something got corrupted…
I can’t try any new programs, I haven’t got any blank disks to copy them for my mother 
She hasn’t got the win98 cd either, my sister has it, she’s got the same problems and it didn’t fix hers. I’ll get some disks tomorrow though and try what you suggested.
Since she can connect to the internet but nothing is displayed, try also installing another browser, like Firefox, maybe Explorer is the cause…
Will give that a go as well. I personally think it is explorer that’s the problem, I thought it should have a winsock file, but can’t find it.
http://www.astonsoft.com/downloads/wsock.zip
Winsock is a freeware utility, designed to restore original Windows 98/2000 socket files, winsock.dll and wsock32.dll. Some very malicious viruses/trojans (such as Matrix, Hybris, Happy 99) replace these files with their own and thus prevent user from using anti-virus software, block email sending and block some webpages. The user of so badly infected PC usually can not do anything, even ask for a help, as email sending is blocked.
You need Winsock restore if:
You can not visit certain website
Can not write emails to certain adresses
Your antivirus software is blocked and won’t start
Outgoing emails with attached viruses are being sent without your intervention.
This program automatically recognizes Windows 98 or Windows 2000 and restores the respective files to original condition.
Use with care.
If it does not work, overinstall Windows.
You you won’t lose your programs, settings, data, files, etc.
Install Windows ‘over’ the old installation, without format.
Thanks I’ll try that…I did try reinstalling win98 and that didn’t work…I’ve tried just about everything now…running out of ideas.
Tried to reinstall win98 and that didn’t fix the problem either. What about reformatting the hard drive?
But did you try the Winsock utility or not?
Tried the winsock utility and it didn’t work…tried everything. Eventually reformatted the hard drive and fixed things that way. Thanks for all the help.