Hilary

Nice to hear from you and I hope things are going well.

The problem I described has been evident with IE and also Cool Novo. This latter is now my main browser of choice and I think it is an upgraded version of Chrome Plus. I do like it very much and find faster than IE. Indeed, I haven't actually used IE in ages.

So, bearing in mind what you said in your post, I launched IE to find the version number:

IE v.11.0.9600.14576 (Update 11.0.2)

Tools/Internet options:-

Aha!!

Something has changed my Home Page from Google News UK!

It's now: http://start.mysearchdial.com/?f=1&a=irmsd1103&cd=2XzuyEtN2Y1L1QzutBtD0C0FtAtD0E0D0D0CyCtByC0DyBzztN0D0Tzu0SyCzyzytN1L2XzutBtFtBtFtCyEtFtCtAyBzytN1L1CzutCyD1B1P1R&cr=633623297&ir=

I've now reset Internet Explorer's settings back to their default condition (in the 'Advanced' tab). This resets everything, disables tool bars and add-ons and resets a whole lot more besides. Also I have ticked the Delete Personal Settings box too. This also deletes and resets all the stuff associated with that.

It also requires a computer restart.

In Cool Novo (I'll call it Chrome) I've looked thoroughly for any 'add-ons'. I quickly found some 'Extensions' and with which I had very little, if any, familiarity with.

I've disabled the following Extensions in Chrome:

Cool Novo Extension Recommendations 1.0.3
My Searchdial New Tab 9.4.10 (BINGO! This is obviously the extension, that's responsible for all my problems)
A 'Chinesey Characters' one which appears to be with American Shopping recommendations (I can't believe I didn't know about this one! For me it would be totally useless anyway!)

I have the following extensions still ticked and I know what they are and what they do:
Stylish 1.2
Readability 3.0.14

Hilary,

Thank you very much for your help. I think you've most likely cracked that irritating browser problem for me. :-)

Pity I won't get to 'go commando' though, like you. Bummer (literally!). Hmmm? Still I can always dream on about you doing it, eh? ;-)

IE browser Home Page now reset to: http://news.google.uk as I want it to be and the box ticked to let me know if it ever changes.

Exec.

It has been mentioned before, but try AVIRA Internet security.

I have used it for about 10 years.

For the first three years I used the Free variety, but as it was good to me and my machine I have paid for the program and 2-3 years ahead.

The only thing which doesn't seem to pick up is the problem described above with tool bars which can be a b. nuisance.

But I block those through the browser and search and remove or the installer.

Also, use periodically Free Reg Cleaner in conjunction with CCleaner. (Both mentioned before.)

Generally, I seem to have a problem free Windows 7 machine.

Good luck.

Ps I have the above running on 5 machines.

Thanks Fred.

Generally speaking, my machine is fast and quite trouble free too, also running on Windows 7.

But I did have that particular problem, as described and which I'm now fairly sure, thanks to Hilary's advice, is now sorted out.

I never thought of it being related to browser add-ons and extensions. I know tool bars can really slow the browsing experience down, particularly the Google Tool Bar on IE.

And I have found an excellent Chrome Tip:

1. Do a Right Click at the very top of the screen when the Chrome browser is fully open.
2. A small advisory window opens.
3. Click on Task Manager within it.
4. A full window opens showing all the running Tasks with tabs showing each Task's memory usage and which CPU is being used for it (if you have more than one) and a little bit more info' besides. This would be useful to show what is running in the background, if anything, when you experience a temporary slow down.

Doc,

Glad to help! Fwiw, those search bar extensions can sometimes be tricky things to remove. Some of them require a full disc scan to find multiple installations, plus a regedit to prevent the things from returning at a later date. Hopefully your one will be easier to remove.

The thing to bear in mind is that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and a lot of 'free' software isn't actually free at all. Search bar extensions often compete against the big players such as Google in an unethical way by serving unwanted ads or by opening unrequested webpages. Let's face it, the major players have the market pretty much sewn up, and the only way to compete in the industry is sometimes via unethical means.

Developers of freeware will often enter into a revenue sharing deal to install an additional bit of unwanted software like your MySearchWotsit at the same time as the freeware is installed.

Hmmm?

Hils, I think it's back. Well something is. I went to my PC quite a bit later than usual at about 11am, having been up late researching a problem concerning our chocolate cockapoo, 'Poppy'.

Poppy was not herself at all last night and was off her food and quite lethargic. So at midnight, onto Google.

Anyhow, I came across a problem called 'Gastric Torsion in Dogs', where they twist their stomach doing something like catching a thrown ball. The dog will first of all go quite lethargic. Quite quickly, this stomach twisting can mess up their intestines, which can then die off and the problem can prove to be fatal and all just within a few days. Well, we love our Poppy to bits and we certainly didn't want that to happen! Aaaargh!

She is an obsessive ball fanatic and although she is only small at 10kgs, can do fantastic 5' high flying twisting leaps to catch a thrown tennis ball. Naturally, out comes the camera and we sorta encourage this stuff. I printed off what I'd read and our whole family were reading it all up at around 1am with a big family discussion on 'Have we twisted her stomach? What shall we do?' kinda stuff.

Fortunately, she's almost back to old self though this morning! A bit quiet with it but very obviously OK. Perhaps, with her wings only being extremely small to even non-existant, her flying yesterday exhausted her. :-)

Meanwhile, becasue of all this last night, the PC was left on standby with a Cool Novo browser window open.

Well! Looking in History something has still been opening new windows on it. There are various URLs to be seen.

From the Task Manager, there now appear to be only two Chrome Novo 'Extensions' open:

1. Readability
2. Stylish

However, the Task Manager tells me two other important things are running:

3. GPU Process
4. Plug-in Shockwave Flash

Also running:

5. Instant: Google
6. Tab Extensions (that's me looking at the Chrome Novo 'Extensions')

I am now going to completely uninstall Cool Novo, see what happens overnight, and see the usual 'opening browser windows without me being involved' happens again.

In the meantime, I'll revert to using regular Chrome. If all is OK then great.

If not, I'll use Regedit when these windows are open, investigate a bit more and see if I need to disable something or whatever.

I do appreciate your help and comments. Hope you have a nice weekend.

Exec.

Another trick I have used on one of my delinquent's computers, was to clean with C Cleaner and Reg cleaner.


Remove Chrome using control panel.

Clean download folder of any references to it.

Download clean Chrome installer.

Remove Firefox.

Clean again.

And the go to download folder and re-install clean version of Chrome.

The problem you have is a bloody nuisance.

Another suggestion is use search in start menu for any constituent of the address and delete them.

Best of luck.

Fred

"Another suggestion is use search in start menu for any constituent of the address and delete them."

That sounds useful.

Why remove Firefox? I don't understand that one. It's a browser, so are you thinking it is somehow responsible for generally planting extensions or add-ons in other browsers?

Some years ago when I downloaded Chrome, it was through Firefox and from memory some of the "contact" data was switch to Chrome directories.

I have Firefox running on my laptop as I like the facility for "translations" and it is easier enough to reload. But prefer Chrome for normal access to internet.

I found the only way I could rid myself of "misdirections" on the "web" effectively was doing as I wrote. (I am sure there are other ways, but I think I spent about a day and a half B. about.)

===

The problem is as Hilary wrote, that some of the pages and Free downloads make their money from loading tracers and search engine followers etc. with or without telling you.

Watch the b. little boxes.


-----------

I may be wrong, but it seemed to work!

Once again, good luck.

Doc,

I did say previously that some of the browser search bar extensions could be tricky to remove. If you've only removed it from the browser plugin list without first uninstalling the program itself (Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs), then there's every probability that it's still there creating havoc as you've since found out.

As well as uninstalling it and removing it from the browser plugin list, you probably also need to check that there aren't multiple instances of it by carrying out some kind of a scan (and possibly a boot scan).

Why don't you follow my suggestion in #10464 which was to Google the culprit's name for removal instructions?

And then, once you've got rid of it, why don't you follow my other suggestion which was to Go Commando and ditch all of the 'free' crap that you've installed which is almost certainly what caused the problem in the first instance?

Fwiw, if you've got some AV software with regularly updated virus definitions and a firewall on your router, that should be enough. Stuff like CCleaner and all the other anti-malware gubbins is really only designed for the 'worried well' imo.

This problem of mine has been very hard to deal with.

For a start, answering the basic question "What is it that I want to remove?" has been extremely difficult.

Anyhow, I uninstalled Cool Novo (a Chrome Plus derivative) and also Chrome. Then I reinstalled just Chrome.

When clicking on the 'three bar' Chrome "Customise and control Google Chrome" button and then "Settings" you can see a section entitled "Search".

Here you can select which search engines to use and choose one to act as your default. I would normally regard my default search engine as being "Google".

However, unbeknowns to me this had been changed to "Mysearchdial".

It is a simple matter to change it back to make Google the default in the "omnibox". In the omnibox it is also a very simple matter to delete "Mysearchdial" from the list of primary search engines. There are many more search engines to use in a second section at the bottom of the omnibox. Once one has been deleted from the primary section, it completely disappears and isn't dropped back down to the secondary search engine list box.

This may not be the complete answer. It may happen again. I'll see what happens.

Doc - I had a similar problem last year, which is documented on this thread (somewhere!)

Here post 10238 - 10254

Thank you so much for that link to earlier in this thread, Skinny.

I see from the posts that follow your link, how Hilary also had a Yontoo search engine problem, which was identically similar to your 'Delta Search' problem, and which in turn are identically similar to my own problems. I will call mine a "Mysearchdial" problem.

It would seem that two pieces of coexisting and mutually helping circularly linked Malware attach themselves the user's computer. Remove one, the other immediately re-instals it, etc, etc.

The result of the malware infestation being, that it changes the user's Default Search Engine and it most probably works its way through all the browsers on the machine.

Removal is extremely difficult and, although one uninstalls a browser or changes to a different browser, the malware will reinstall itself.

I harvested two detailed removal techniques from the posting links above.

In summary, these are:

1. Malware Tips: Remove Deltasearch

2. Spyware Forum: Need help removing Deltasearch? - page 1

3. Spyware Forum: Need help removing Deltasearch? - page 2

Doc,

You're right when you say about there being two malicious programs running in tandem which effect re-installation of each other by stealth if one is uninstalled. I doubt, however, that re-installation is carried out immediately. It's far more likely imo that there's an instance of something or other which runs at startup and it does its jiggery-pokery then.

If you can't clearly see what's doing the damage via Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, I suggest you run msconfig and hit the Startup tab. Scroll down through the list of executables and Google each item on the list in turn to see what it does exactly. I'm sure that you'll soon be able to spot the culprit(s) if you use that method.

Once you've identified the cause, you can disable it from running at startup and I'd then search your PC for all instances of it and delete them.

PS. I'd forgotten about that Yontoo thing.

Sorry, Hils

I clean forgot to mention I sorted my problems out by downloading and running:

AdwCleaner v3.018

Care has to be taken with the download source because like you've emphasised on here, any download these days can be accompanied with all sorts of add-ons, tool bars and the like, which are probably just as bad as the stuff one is trying to remove with this program.

Anyhow, it was easy-peasy to use, did the job thoroughly, cleaned all my browsers and everything is now tickety boo.

I want to convert an M4V file to AVI or similar - there seems to be tons of 'free' software - any recommendations?

DVDVideoSoft is a great suite of programs that do everything and FREE

http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-dvd-video-software.htm#.Uw9KPMGnxYk

Skinners,

There's shedloads of M4V to AVI convertors on some of my coupon code sites with free (trial) downloads.

The search function on my Discount Software Vouchers site is very good (try http://discountsoftwarevouchers.com/search/?query=m4v+avi) for finding stuff.

However, to access the free trialware (and best prices if you want to buy after you've tried), you'll need to head on over either to my Coupon Code Shack website (http://couponcodeshack.com/) or to eSoftware Coupons (http://esoftwarecoupons.com/). Unfortunately, the search function on those two sites needs recoding to get them up to scratch.

Thanks Haystack - running it now.

Hils - that's why I asked - it seems the world and his brother have developed software.

I've been given a copy of a current film in M4V format and my Samsung TV - not surprisingly, won't see it on the USB - obviously I can watch it on my PC, but not quite the same.

Thanks for the links - I'll have a play.