Help! My browsers were hijacked!

tigershrimp

Estimable
Jun 21, 2014
8
0
4,510
Hello, I'll be honest with my story, I've been using a program (StartIsBack++) which increased size of icons in my taskbar since in W10 they were so tiny, but it had a trial which apparently ran out so I went out searching for a key so I wouldn't have such issues. But the damn keygens ( which appeared at the 1st page of search window in google) were not keygens but a cluster of malware, during installation I tried so called custom installation (even though express installation was selected by default) but it didn't allowed me, as I clicked the custom installation checkbox it auto-began installing me shitload of malware such as Opera, Crossbrowse, shitload of toolbars, but most annoying, hijacked by firefox and chrome browsers. I've tried everything, tried system restore, tried checking for viruses with avast, none found, tried Malwarebytes, some things were found which I removed but the core issue persisted, I did uninstalled all that snapgo/opera/crossbrowse stuff but my browsers remain locked out for me. I did tried to uninstall and reinstall both browsers , change their homepage settings and what happens on new tab but the problem persists.

On Chrome there's no malware-style homepage and new tab pages, however access to most sites has been blocked, I checked if there's any addons uninstalled em and everything there's no toolbars nothing left but still here's what happens when I try to open for example tomshardware.co.uk though chrome:
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Even worse case scenario for my favourite browser, firefox,even though ive did everything to remove this snapgo sneaky malware it's still here and more active than ever, even though that my homepage and default new tab pages are set to default Mozilla pages it still opens snapgo, even though my default search engine is google it forcibly uses snapgo, and access to almost all sites is blocked too, just like in chrome:
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So my question.. what else can I do, is the only way for me is hard drive wipe and clean w10 install? By the way if you wonder how I've managed to access tomshardware, I'm doing it through Edge browser, apparently its the only one which was not affected by the onslaught of malware,probably because it simply does not support many stuff yet.I'd wish to completely get rid of snapgo and block that site permanently including whoever developed it, also id like to know is it possible that those guys secretly stole my personal data, logins of sites, banking and credit card data?
 

tigershrimp

Estimable
Jun 21, 2014
8
0
4,510
well yeah, does windows defender and firewall count? I cant afford nor allow myself to run multiple anti virus programs because not only that would set my wallet on fire but also my PC performance would take a punch, I'm using 7200RPM HDD and i3-2100 3.1GHz dual core CPU, aint think it could bear several antiviruses running in the background all the time.
 

tigershrimp

Estimable
Jun 21, 2014
8
0
4,510
..jesus,thanks much help... wipe and reinstall due to tiny annoying malware.. and all because of small utility which makes icons of reasonable size, dude idon't believe you should charge serious $ for such minor stuff.

You're young you have good vision, now understand people in their late thirties which aint have eagle's eye vision anymore, W10 should've created the icons larger in the first place, and the build in utilities in windows scale whole windows, which results in firefox autoscaling thing which results in further problems with firefox and so on.. yeah... very complex stuff
 

bmw-vision

Estimable
Sep 8, 2015
40
0
4,610
If it is indeed malware, download Malwarebytes, this should do most of it, there's another program that is also good to use, but I can't think of it right now. You can use the free version.

https://www.malwarebytes.org/

**Edit
Just remembered the other program,
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/

Not sure about the website, but download from the author's page listed.

Run Malwarebytes first, then this. It will remove smaller stuff, usually thats leftover by Malwarebytes. You could put the setups on USB and then run them on your computer. I would highly reccomend getting an ant-virus, even a free one is better than none. Would recommend AVG, Bitdefender or Panda anti-virus.
 

Geekwad

Estimable
Sep 25, 2015
75
0
4,610


To be honest, no, not really. They're better than nothing, but it isn't saying much.

.....soooooo, download the free trial for Kaspersky Total Security:

http://usa.kaspersky.com/downloads/

Then disconnect from the internet totally/disable your NIC. Before installing it, uninstall Firefox and anything else you can easily reload (Chrome, Avast, MWB, etc). Install KTS, then run a full sweep. Then reconnect to the internet, update the database, disconnect, and run the full sweep again. See where that gets you....

If it does help, please consider the $5/mo for great full coverage all in one package....including malware, virus, and much much more.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, when running the full sweeps, do so from Safe Mode with no networking support:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/change-startup-settings-in-windows-10#v1h=tab01
 

bmw-vision

Estimable
Sep 8, 2015
40
0
4,610
While kaspersky is good, malwarebytes and adware cleaner are probably going to work better for malware. I have used malwarebytes and adware cleaner to fix all malware problems I've come across (And I've seen some bad ones).
Hijacked browsers typically need to be fix in the registry, and I don't think Kaspersky can do this.
Could be wrong though, I've never used Pure to solve these types of problems, I'm just telling you what I have done to fix these issues.
 

tigershrimp

Estimable
Jun 21, 2014
8
0
4,510


Dude, did you even read what i said in post? i WAS using BOTH malwarebytes AND anti-virus, so damn.. these people which come up to post a suggestion without even reading..

Decided to just wipe HDD and clean install nothing else worked,lost all files, presets everything but its okay, atlast snapgo is gone, hopefully forever. (if il find out who designed that site, they're history)
 

Geekwad

Estimable
Sep 25, 2015
75
0
4,610
So sorry to hear, but glad you got rid of it. I always schedule a full backup to external every night, just in case this or anything else every happens (did once for me too....years ago).
 

ScottyBoyK1

Estimable
Nov 1, 2015
23
0
4,560
hi, just wanted to add for future reference that these guys usually know what their doing, already used them before for some malware.
https://malwaretips.com/blogs/snap-do-toolbar-removal/