Hi there. I think my home computer has been infected by some kind of redirect virus after I downloaded a free MP3 player so I really need help in removing it now. Every time I surf on the Internet, Home.SearchPile.com hijacks my web browser immediately. It seems to affect both Firefox and IE. I ran my scanner in order to remove it, but it detects nothing suspicious. I also tried to uninstall suspicious applications from control panel but still can not make it gone. How can I remove this browser hijacker from my PC completely? Any help will be appreciated.
Home.SearchPile.com (as known as Search Pile) is a fake search engine created by cyber criminals to advertise sponsored websites and get artificial traffic. Technically speaking it is not a virus, but it can take over your browser (such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Chrome or Safari) and perform tons of malicious activities on your machine like other computer parasites. This hijacker usually installs on a target computer without any permission but it may turn out to be a clear sign that your browser has been hijacked. You will find that your default search provider and homepage are suddenly changed to Home.SearchPile.com which looks like a normal search page but in fact it tries to promote some commercial websites all the time. In addition, you will be blocked from accessing your favorite web pages and your security will be minimal, also you cannot use your favorite search engines, and what you request is not delivered. Even though you have changed the browser settings a thousand times, it doesn’t make any changes. This spam search engine also displays endless advertisements and sponsored links in your search results, and it may collect search terms from your search queries as well.
Although Home.SearchPile.com looks like a normal search website as similar as Google, Bing or Yahoo, it is affiliated with browser hijackers and the ZeroAccess Rootkit that can infect a computer by exploiting security vulnerabilities and cause many troubles to computer users. The main purpose of it is to promote sponsored websites and build traffic for them. Although it doesn’t mean this hijacker will definitely take you to malicious pages, there are no guarantees that it only promotes safe ones. Most people don’t know how they get infected and they have no idea how to get rid of Search Pile hijacker since antivirus program cannot help to detect the presence of a redirect/hijacker virus. In fact, this browser hijacker often invades target computer bundled with the free downloads from the internet such as shareware games or various video players. To completely clean it off your PC, manual removal is needed.
It belongs to browser hijacker virus which can totally mess up your browser setting.
It changes your default DNS configuration and blocks you accessing your favorite sites.
It may install some malware in your computer to make bad influence without your consent.
It degenerates your computer performance gradually.
Browser hijacker infection like Home.SearchPile.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.
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
Home.SearchPile.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 Home.SearchPile.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 Home.SearchPile.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
Home.SearchPile.com is a browser hijacker is a dangerous website which acts as a real search engine to collect information on the infected computers. It gets into a computer from unsafe freeware, shareware or advertising-supported programs such as various browser add-ons or toolbars. Once it is attached to your browser, it installs its own add-on on your browser immediately, so you can get various pop-up messages bombarding your computer screen. By using this fake search engine, PC users may get irrelevant results which contain other virus infections on it. What is more, this hijacker could be used to track user’s web browsing habits, record addresses of visited sites and send collected data to a remote server, therefore computer users should remove it as soon as possible.
Published by on August 28, 2015 1:41 am, last updated on August 28, 2015 1:41 am
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