Chrome browser hijack to www-search.net

[burns334]

Occasionally on startup in xp or opening a new tab my browser is hijacked to www-search.net another new tab usually goes to google as it should, lots of times my preferences can not be loaded and adblock plus disappears from my extensions list. The page shows a banner with Tuvaro and a search bar below it with Bing on the right end. I have tried super anti spyware, malwarebytes and several others to no avail even in safe mode. I have reset my settings in chrome but they get switched back to the problem hijack. There is nothing in my add or remove programs that looks out of place. A google search has lots of solutions but I have not been able to find one that works for me. It does not seem to cause any problems but it annoys me, it has hijacked IE also. I've been at this now for several days, on and off but it always comes back, any help would be appreciated.

burns

[rkawakami]

Have you tried this: http://www.fixyourbrowser.com/removal-i ... age-virus/ ?

[burns334]

Ray, no luck basically I tried all that before. When I go to the desk shortcuts they are all clean, no search.net there. Malwarebytes came up with 1pup, gonzo something which I removed but when I open new tabs in chrome every third or fourth tab is redirected.

[rkawakami]

There's the browser reset that will set everything back to default but you'll lose some personal settings.

While the following will probably not remove the redirect, you should be able to block any browser from accessing that site by editing your "hosts" file. Assuming XP, it's in c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc . Edit the file with Notepad and put the following in there:

127.0.0.1 www-search.net

Any redirects to that site will be blocked. You'll get a "site not found" error message in the browser but at least you won't actually go there.

[burns334]

All, bleepingcomputer.com helped me out, They recommended running Adaware, Junkware toolbox, ESET scanner and then minitoolbox. This fixed the problem

burns

[Saucey]

I find using rkill before running any antivirus very effective.

Try out adwcleaner as well.
I check all tasks that are running, if I see a suspicious .exe, I search it to see if its adware or bloatware.
But I did get a nasty virus from not updating java, it affected svchost.exe.

Did you erase all history from internet explorer?
Although you probably didn't use it, it could of gotten affected by it somehow.

[ansible212]

I've found ADWCleaner to be very effective in these situations:

http://download.cnet.com/AdwCleaner/300 ... 51221.html