I have a new Toshiba laptop that I’ve had for about 3 months now and I am starting to get a lot of pop ups on a daily basis. It happens on both IE and Firefox. Each time I do a google search, and click on any of the suggested sites, I get a large pop-up window with the address www.strtsrv.com, followed by a lot of “rubbish” numbers and letters. I run my security scan but it doesn’t find anything. How do I get rid of those annoying pop-ups for good?
www.strtsrv.com pop-up is a kind of browser hijacker that can appear itself in the most popular browsers like Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer whenever you try to get online because it is able to modify browser settings and corrupt the local DNS (or Domain Name System) entries to accomplish its hijacker. If you keep receiving different advertisements offering you coupons, discount deals, and free gifts whenever you are surfing on the Internet, your computer must be hijacked by an adware or contain one or more potentially unwanted programs.
Now there are many ad-supported programs, games or utilities that are distributed as adware (or freeware) and it is easy for an inexperience user to download adware without any awareness. Typically, it gets installed by bundling with free downloads from the internet then it can modify settings of Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome, causing many inconveniences for the users eventually. When it is running in the background, it prevents you from viewing the Web pages that you want to see on your browser. It may display many fake errors or information on your browser screen you are on, tricking you into downloading something malicious. Also when you try to open a certain page, it will redirects you to www.strtsrv.com or other random sites. This website will install spyware, malware or viruses onto your computer without your permission or can be porn–related or full of advertising banners that make creators of this parasite money. Furthermore, it can change your default homepage and search engine. To completely protect your computer, you had better get rid of www.strtsrv.com red
Browser hijacker infection like www.strtsrv.com may enter your system as an add-on for your browser or bundled-up with some free software. Most of time, it can be downloaded from a website you visited, something you clicked on, or a pop-up that you did not request to view. You may not even know when and how you download this browser hijacker which compromises your internet security until you find your computer is fully messed up. A hijack virus is a type of computer virus known for its ability to disrupt your Internet browsing. It can redirect your Internet searches to random sites, disallow you from visiting certain Web sites, and change your Internet home page. In addition, it is able to slow your computer, decrease your available memory, and flood your computer with popup advertisements. When you detect the presence of such malicious hijacker, a complete removal is needed without any hesitation.
If you open your browser window (includes IE, Firefox, Safari and Google Chrome etc.) and notice immediately that your home page has been changed to a page you do not recognize, then your browser may have been hijacked by a virus. For this type of hijack virus, it can change your homepage to www.strtsrv.com without your permission. Other malicious activities can be shown on your computer after hijacked are listed below:
1. You keep getting random pop-ups opening in new browser tabs.
2. When clicking on Google search links you get taken to sites that have nothing to do with the subject you searched for.
3. Anti-virus and firewall software won’t start.
4. Internet stops working.
5. Unknown software has been installed without your authorization.
6. You can’t access reputable sites unless you type the URL into the navigation bar
www.strtsrv.com hijacks your browser to redirect your web search results and changes the homepage and browser settings. To completely uninstall it from an infected system, manual removal is the first choice because sometimes antivirus software cannot pick up the exact computer threat timely or remove it permanently. Now most browser hijackers are quite similar to spyware and adware threats and therefore cannot be removed with the help of popular antivirus products. Users can follow the manual guide here to get rid of this browser hijacker completely.
1. Clear all the cookies of your affected browsers.
Since this tricky hijacker virus has the ability to use cookies for tracing and tracking the internet activity of users, it is suggested users delete all the cookies before a complete removal.
Google Chrome:
Click on the “Tools” menu and click the “Clear browsing data” button.
Select “Delete cookies and other site data” to delete all cookies from the list.
Internet Explorer:
Open Internet explorer window
Click the “Tools” button
Point to “safety” and then click “delete browsing history”
Tick the “cookies” box, then click “delete”
Mozilla Firefox:
Click on Tools, then Options, select Privacy
Click “Remove individual cookies”
In the Cookies panel, click on “Show Cookies”
To remove a single cookie click on the entry in the list and click on the “Remove Cookie”
To remove all cookies click on the “Remove All Cookies” button
2. End the malicious process from Task Manager.
Once www.strtsrv.com redirect is installed, computer user may notice that CPU usage randomly jumps to 100 percent. At any time Windows always has many running processes. A process is an individual task that the computer runs. In general, the more processes, the more work the computer has to do and the slower it will run. If your system’s CPU spike is constant and remain at a constant 90-95%, users should check from Task Manager and see if there is a suspicious process occupying the system resources and then end it immediately.
(The name of the virus process can be random.)
Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc to quickly bring up Task Manager Window：
3. Show hidden files and folders.
Open Folder Options by clicking the Start button, clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options.
Click the View tab.
Under Advanced settings, click Show hidden files and folders, uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) and then click OK.
4. Remove all the malicious files related to www.strtsrv.com hijacker manually.
%AppData%Local[random].exe
C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\*.exe
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main StartPage
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
If you see www.strtsrv.com pop-up showing on your browser each time you launch the program or go online, it is sure that your computer has been infected by an adware or browser hijacker virus. This hijacker uses browser helper objects and third party malware including sponsored adware and spyware platforms to change your homepage and modify your browser settings without your permission. It is very annoying that your web browser suddenly starts behaving as if it had a mind of its own. By keep forcing users to visit this page, the attacker can boost traffic and generate pop up ads to make money. With a hijacker inside the computer, it blocks your antivirus program from running properly and keeps leading you to phishing websites and other sites with questionable content. Therefore, if you want to completely get rid of such annoyance, just follow the above instructions to remove www.strtsrv.com redirect step by step.
Note: If you are not a computer expert and have no idea how to perform the removal, please contact experts from YooCare Online Tech Support for further help.
Published by on March 6, 2014 10:57 am, last updated on March 6, 2014 10:57 am
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