I have been plagued by this same "about:blank" hijack that keeps reinstalling itself and things like HJT, CWShreeding, Spybot and Adware Away do not do any good to resolve the problem. Every thim I have rebooted the settings have been restored and each new browser version has opened to the "Search For..." page.

Finally one thing I did has now removed this hijack for two days, with no sign of it returning.

I removed the Google search toolbar from my browser.

I believe this hijack reinstalls itself from software added to the Google toolbar that is re-initiated each time you start your browser after a reboot.

Simply first remove the Google toolbar and then follow other steps through HJT, etc to remove the other entries,etc. You may need to run these in Safe Mode.

Does ANYONE who has this browser hijack NOT have the Google search toolbar? I would be interested to see replies to this.

Yes- we've seen more than a few instances of the about:blank issue where the Google toolbar played no part.

Specifically in the cases involving about:blank and the search page "Search for..." coming up with each new browser version there have been cases where the Google toolbar played no part?

How are you certain of this? Have you asked about the presence of the Google search bar on the IE browser in each and every case?

You can see fingerprints of the Google bar's existence (or lack thereof) in the logs generated by HJT and other diagnostic tools that people post. As for the "Search for" part of the symptom. I'm not sure if you'll see that if you aren't using the Google bar, but the about:blank hijack itself certainly isn't limited to those using the Google bar.