My friend has somehow gotten ask.com to be his home page on both Internet Explorer and Firefox and unable to make google his default search engine. Well we set google as the home page and that works until either browser is restarted. When restarted the home page and search engine reverts back to Ask. The Ask toolbar is no longer in the add/remove Windows list of programs. Are there some registry entries that are causing these problems? Is there a program or removal utility that will remove all the Ask problems without making me reinstall the toolbar on my friend's computer? Also, he's using Windows Defender as his av. Will some av scan and remove the Ask crapware as a PUP if it's already installed? thanks
This might help http://malwaretips.com/blogs/browser-toolbar-removal/ or http://malwaretips.com/blogs/search-ask-com-removal/
Windows Defender no longer qualifies as an AV.. So that's the first problem here. Just uninstall Ask, then reset the browsers, then run MBAM Free. After that install a real AV, problem solved.
Two programs specialize in removing such 'junk': AdwCleaner - http://general-changelog-team.fr/en/tools/15-adwcleaner Junkware Removal Tool - http://thisisudax.org/
I reset IE then scanned and cleaned with MBAM...rebooted and everything was ok...thanks...also switched from the windows av
Sounds like it's fixed so that's good news. For future reference, to remove stubborn IE add-ons, right click its entry in the add-on manager, select More Information. Look for the Class ID, it'll look like this {CC59E0F9-7E43-44FA-9FAA-8377850BF205}. Delete all instances of that string in the registry and presto it'll be gone. If you have a lot of customizations in IE that'll save you from having to go back and redo them all.
