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All:

A friend was recently hijacked and with the help of the folks from that forum was able to get everythng cleaned off. At this point the pc is clean as a whistle - well it can't actually whistle, but I digress.

In any event, when I start IE, I get an popup box stating the following:
"A Runtime Error has occurred - Do you wish to Debug? Line 1 Error: Invalid Character" It then allows me to debug or not and I say no. The same error pops up again, I say no and go to my homepage -

My homepage is also a bit wierd these days. While the text shows up, there is no blue background and none of the shading for different areas is there. On this page, the purple banners would be missing.

I have gone in and told the system that IE is not installed and re-run the install process for IE 6.0.2800 SP1 and still get the same error. Note that the msn.com page is the only page this happens on When I switched my homepage to yahoo, it came up fine, but when I go back to msn.com, it looks like compost.

Any thoughts anyone might have would be greatly appreciated
Thanks
- - agavzy

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Dani AI

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Short follow-up and a compact checklist for anyone who hits the same IE startup "Runtime Error — Line 1: Invalid Character" dialog and sees a homepage that loses its styling. Thread shows the immediate problem was resolved — thanks to for the pointer and to for confirming — but a few extra sanity checks help prevent a return of the issue after malware cleanup.

Safe, practical steps to run now (in order): clear Temporary Internet Files and cookies, then reset IE to defaults (Tools → Internet Options → Advanced → Reset). In Internet Options → Advanced, enable "Disable script debugging" and disable "Display a notification about every script error" so errors don’t interrupt browsing. Use Manage Add-ons to disable unknown toolbars or BHOs. Temporarily set the homepage to about:blank and load the problematic page manually (and in another browser) to confirm whether the problem is browser-specific.

If the runtime dialog persists, re-register the scripting engines and check system files — both are conservative, commonly recommended fixes after infection-removal: 

sfc /scannow
regsvr32 /s jscript.dll
regsvr32 /s vbscript.dll

A concise note about the "Invalid Character" + lost styling: a frequent culprit is stray bytes at the start of a script or stylesheet (for example a UTF‑8 BOM) or an injected wrapper/redirect that puts non-text bytes before page content. If comfortable, view/save the homepage and included CSS/JS and inspect the very first bytes for unexpected characters. Also check startup shortcuts and registry Run entries for wrappers that might be loading a local file as the homepage.

After fixes, run a full up-to-date anti‑malware scan, apply Windows updates, and reboot. If the problem returns, capture the exact error text and which file or URL triggers it — that detail often tells whether the issue is a corrupt local file, an add-on, or a leftover registry/startup entry.

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Member Avatar for agavzy

Seems to be fixed!

Thanks for the link - we can close the thread now:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :) :)

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