Friend Used Hjt Incorrectly, Now He Can't Connect To The Net

This guy I play an online game with is having this issue: He was told to run hijack this and remove every thing it finds. Now Firefox and IE wont load any pages. He also says instant messengers will not work either. The game we play though still allows him to connect and log in. He is running win2k. Any idea what he removed that would have these effects and how he would fix it?

Hi,
Welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear that your friend received such bad advice and also that he took the advice and in so doing, probably damaged his machine.

The main reason for using a powerful tool like Hijackthis (HJT) is when the presence of viral, worm, trojan or other undesirable elements are suspected, but items should only be removed by using the tool under the guidance of an expert, as many of the items listed are legitimate and even essential to the correct running of the computer .

Fortunately as long as HJT was run from a permanent directory/folder it will usually be possible to "undo the fixes" that removed all the items found by the scan. Hopefully it will be possible to get your friend's machine running correctly again.

It is strongly recommended that he post his HJT log into the malware removal forum where he will receive expert advice on the presence or otherwise of "undesirable elements" that may or may not be present on his machine and detailed instructions on how to restore the lines that were incorrectly removed.
Here's a link to the malware removal forum:
http://forums.whatthetech.com/HijackThis_L…emoval_f27.html

Some times the number of folks requesting detailed advice and assistance exceeds the numbers of malware removal experts, so it will be helpful if you could tell your friend that the experts there will respond to his post as soon as they can, and whilst we all know how tough it can be to wait for a response that's the best thing he can do.
Regards
paws

When you start HijackThis, you should see some options to click. One will be "View List of Backups" Click on that and you'll see the items that we fixed with HJT. Put a check by all and over on the right, click Restore.