http://search.sweetim.com launches itself as my webpage every time I open firefox, as well as IE. And I notice SweetIM toolbar is installed somehow, I cannot get rid of it because it doesn’t show up in control panel. How to remove http://search.sweetim.com redirect? If you are suffering this annoying issue, please follow the manual guides below to completely get rid of sweetim virus.
http://search.sweetim.com is categorized as a redirect virus that changes your homepage and default search provider without your permission and makes some modifications in your browser settings. Usually this hijacker is able to affect browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome and it is promoted via other free downloads. Once running, it will change your homepage, default search engine to http://search.sweetim.com and add SweetIM Toolbar to your computer. The purpose of this program is to advertise lots of sponsored websites and collect information about your browsing habits.
Undoubtedly, this is an unwanted program. It can be added to your system together with some other programs that you download from the Internet. Unwary users are not aware of additional applications reaching their systems because they didn’t deselect the unwanted programs during the last step of installation. Thus, http://search.sweetim.com redirect virus can sneak into the computer and make chaos. Whenever you try to browse online, it causes tons of redirections to its domain which looks like a search engine. In fact, this bogus search engine doesn’t provide any real search engine features. This redirect virusworks by offering fraudulent search results and forcing your web browser to search.sweetim.com constantly so that criminals can use the artificial traffic to boost affiliate payments. Therefore, you must remove http://search.sweetim.com Redirect virus without any doubt.
When http://search.sweetim.com redirect is inside your computer, your security software may be blocked immediately and your homepage will be changed without your permission. In addition, it degrades overall web browser stability and performance as it wastes too much computer resources. The most irritating feature of this redirect virus is that it will keep redirecting you to various harmful websites against your will. If you try to search something from Google, Bing or other search page as your preferred, you will be redirected to other irrelevant page. Thus, this issue should be fixed as soon as possible.
1. It can redirect you to malicious websites with numerous pop up ads to interrupt and stop you from doing anything on your computer;
2. It can turn your computer to run slowly and pose sudden death;
3. It can introduce more unwanted viruses and ransomware to do further harms;
4. It can help cyber criminals track your online activities and capture significant personal data to cause you a loss of value.
5. It can change your default DNS configuration and block you accessing your favorite sites.
6. It forcibly customizes the default homepage, search engine and bookmarks of your computer.
Considering http://search.sweetim.com redirect can’t be fixed by any security tools, uses can use the manual guide below to fix this issue.
1. Clear all the cookies of your affected browsers.
Since tricky hijacker virus has the ability to use cookies for tracing and tracking the internet activity of users, it is suggested users to delete all the cookies before a complete removal.
Google Chrome:
Click on the “Tools” menu and select “Options”.
Click the “Under the Bonnet” tab, locate the “Privacy” section 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 button”
To remove all cookies click on the “Remove All Cookies button”
2. End the malicious process from Task Manager.
Once this dangerous redirect is installed, computer user may notice that CPU usage randomly jumps to 100 percent, slowing down the computer. If your system’s CPU spike is constant, 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 at the same time and it will open up task manager directly. Then change to “Processes” tab.
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 manually.
%AppData%Local[random].exe
C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\*.exe
C:\Documents and Settings\LocalService\Local Settings\*.*
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System “DisableTaskMgr” = ’1′
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\system “DisableTaskMgr” = ’1′
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Download “CheckExeSignatures” = ‘no’
http://search.sweetim.com redirect is one of the most annoying things that can happen on your computer. It aims to hijack your web browsers and perform malicious tasks to interrupt your browsing activities. This virus is aggressive and it can infect any browsers such as IE, Firefox, Google Chrome and it comes together with some downloads of shareware, freeware. Although it looks like a search engine, you still cannot trust it because it only provides fake search results that include advertisements and compromises your web browser and even changes your default search engine and homepage. To safely eliminate this annoying problems, you have to manually get rid of http://search.sweetim.com as quickly as you can.
Note: If you are not knowledgeable enough to be able to distinguish the location of this virus, or you are afraid of making mistake during the manual removal, please contact experts from YooCare Online Tech Support for further help.
Published by on June 26, 2013 2:02 am, last updated on April 22, 2014 9:16 am
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