If you recently installed some free game or software you may have also, without noticing, that you may have agreed to also install search conduit. If your browser looks like the picture below then you have the search conduit program installed on your computer. 

search conduit virus/malware

Some have referred to this as a virus while others will call it malware, either way its a very annoying piece of software that takes over your browser homepage settings and starts to display more ads and slow down your computer. So how do you get rid of it? Below are the steps to follow to get rid of this.

1. Open internet explorer and click on the little gear icon in the top right (or the tools button if you have an older version of IE).

2. Select internet options. Now click on the advance tab and then click on RESET button. On the window that pops place a checkmark next to delete personal settings then click on RESET.

3. When it’s finished click on Close and then click OK. Now close out internet explorer

4. Now go to www.malwarebytes.org and download the free version of malwarebytes.

5. Install this program. Once its finish installing it should open up (if not just double click on the malwarebytes icon you see on your desktop).

6. Under the scanner tab you should select Perform a full scan. NOTE: It may take up to a couple of hours to do a complete scan depending on how much data you have on your computer. Just let the scan run until it finishes.

7. Once it’s done running the scan you will be able to click on a button that says Show Results. Click on this.

8. Now place a checkmark next to all the items it found. Make sure you scroll all the way down and checkmark everything. Then click on Remove Selected.

malwarebytes virus removal checklist

9. At this point it will start to remove all the malware it found (including search conduit) and show you a log of what it did and also may tell you that you now need to restart your computer. Go ahead and click YES to restart computer so it can finish removing the malware.

10. If malwarebytes found a lot of things like over 100+ items I recommend that you run another full scan just to make sure your computer is clean.

11. Once your computer boots back up you should now free of search conduit and also another other malware. Open up internet explorer and you should not see the search conduit webpage now.

These steps are not only good for removing search conduit but for any other malware you might have on your computer. I recommend that you run malwarebytes at least once a month or whenever you notice your computer running slower than usual or weird things showing up on your computer.

Leave a comment below and let me know if this has helped you.

RG

I just wanted to give a brief overview of what malware is and the difference between this and viruses. Malware stands for malicious software and is software that gets installed on your computer without your approval. Malware is a general terms that is often used to describe all of the spyware, worms, viruses, and pretty much just about anything else that is created to mess up your computer and steal information off of it.

Viruses are programs that can replicate themselves and try to infect more than one computer. It is designed to spread itself onto more computers and wreak havoc this way. Some viruses will try and delete files or corrupt system files to render your computer inoperable. In general viruses try to wreak havoc and “break” your computer by changing or deleting files.

In my next post I will go over the steps I take to clean and repair a computer that has malware on it.

RG

I just read an article today that I thought I would share with you in case you haven’t heard. If your computer is infected with the DNS Changer malware your computer will not be able to access the internet on July 9th, 2012. The FBI is going to prevent computers infected with this virus from accessing the internet.

The DNS changer trojan horse surfaced in 2007 and had infected millions of computers both PC and Mac. It would redirect you to hacked websites and kept your computer from updating or using your antivirus programs.

To see if you are infected with this virus go to http://www.dns-ok.us/ and if your computer is infected you can run a repair tool from Avira at http://www.avira.com/en/support-for-home-knowledgebase-detail/kbid/1199

If you have any questions or have trouble getting rid of this virus please let me know and I would be more than happy to help. But you need to act soon as July 9th is fast approaching.

RG

***Updated 6/5/2012***

I just came across this offer and thought I would share it with everyone. You can get Norton Internet Security 2012 software for only $23.99 (which is a $56 savings over the retail cost of $79.99). This offer is only good till 6/09/12. Click here to view the offer.

 This is a great deal and if you currently don’t have an antivirus software this would be good one to get. If you feel this is still too expensive then you can always try a free one call Avast. So either download Avast or buy Norton but just make sure you have some kind of antivirus protection on your computer to prevent many hours of headache should you ever get a virus.

I came across this issue yesterday and wanted to let you know what I found and how you can go about fixing this.  The computer I saw this on was running Windows Vista but I imagine it could also happen on windows 7 or XP.  Anyways, I found that the laptop had a virus and this virus had hidden all the desktop, documents, and other files and folders to make it look like you had lost everything on your computer.  The first thing you need to do is make sure your anti virus program is up to date and run a full scan.  After that you should also go to http://malwarebytes.org/ and downloand and run a full scan of this also.  Once you know for sure you have gotten rid of the virus and or malware you can now download unhide.exe from http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/grinler/unhide.exe . Download this program and run it.  It may take sometime to run but once it’s done you should hopefully be able to see your files on the desktop and under the Documents folder.  **NOW GO BUY A BACKUP DRIVE AND BACKUP YOUR DATA!**.  You will have hopefully learned a lesson here and realize that you got lucky but next time it could be worse.  So please go buy a backup drive or use a service such as Mozy and backup your data today.

I hope this helps you as it can be a really scary to turn on your computer and think you have just lost everything. 

RG