Homepage Hijack

Question: About a week or two ago suddenly "coolwebsearch.org" appeared as my Internet home page (rather than msn.com). It also appeared under our search button and we cannot get rid of it permanently. We can manually put back msn.com for our home page and periodically the coolwebsearch will appear again. We are unable to remove it at all from our search button. The customize feature does not let us change back to Yahoo or any other service.We looked in add/remove programs, we deleted all the temporary Internet files and periodically coolwebsearch.org reappears. When it reappears we find more cookies and Internet files with coolwebsearch.org and delete them but it still continues to come back.Initially we tried to do a goback and, much to our dismay, our history was gone and there was nowhere to go back to prior to this coolwebsearch appearing.This is very annoying that I cannot get rid of this permanently and, what is more upsetting is that this particular home page caters to pornographic sights.Is there anything we can do to get rid of this?Thank you for your attention.Janet W.
Answer: This is actually a rather common thing that can be extremely annoying. It generally happens when you receive a pop up window and try to close it. The window will ask you if you would like to set a particular page as your homepage. In your attempt to close the window, you may have inadvertently select coolwebsearch.org as your homepage. The desire is usually to draw attention to their website and or a product that they may be trying to push. Have no fear the fix is painless. You have two options to correct your problem.
The first is to open the control panel through the start menu or my computer icon. Next, double click on the “Internet Options” icon. The window should open to the tab labeled “General”. The first subsection is titled “Home page”. It is there that you may type in the web address of the site that you would like to be your home page. All that is left to do is to select the “OK” button at the bottom of the window.
The next option may be a little simpler. Open a Microsoft Internet explorer window. Next, look at the upper left of the window and you should see some headings (such as File, Edit, View, Favorites, and Tools). Look under the "Tools" heading and select "Internet Options". It should open to the "general" tab. If it doesn't, then select it. The top area should say "Homepage". Type in the web address that you would like to be your homepage, and OK. You're done.
You may also find that installing a pop up killer or ad blocking software, to be a benefit. It should limit or eliminate the ads that reset your home page. You know the saying, an ounce of prevention. As usual, feel free to email me your question.