I recently encountered such situation: each time I opened browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox, I found my homepage was changed automatically, and some disgusting malicious websites popped up. I think my computer must be infected by some viruses. The bad things it brings to my computer that I can see have already made me so annoyed. What more destructive activities it would perform in the background? It is so disturbing to keep my PC under this situation. I am so worried about it.Is there any way to get rid of it? Can anyone help me out of this trouble?
Start2.me is a nasty browser hijacker which is able to redirect all the searching results without your permission. And you will encounter traffic when you visit this particular website. Once you click on one of the links that shows on the website you can never get the result you want. Instead those websites will bring you lots of trojans, bugs, spywares and other threats which are designed elaborately by cyber criminals. The problem caused by this virus primarily is associated with browsers like Google Chrome, Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. This browser hijacker has the ability to change the default homepage to its particular website and make it as default search engine.Every time you try to launch the browser, you will get redirected to Start2.me and you will find a lot of awful things pop up. Those pop-ups are mainly unwanted links related to commercial websites which lure you to buy their products. What is worse, cyber criminals also use Start2.me to help other infections to further damage your computer.
The Start2.me infection can easily slide into your computer when you go online with little cautions. You has a high chance to run into this trouble by visiting porno websites, playing online gambling or opening attachments of spam emails from a seem-to-be-normal contact user. It can bypass antivirus program’s detection and the computer’s security level will be degraded seriously. Furthermore, it provides an access door for all kinds of viruses to intrude your computer hand in hand unscrupulously. It is impossible for you to stop their crazy activities when those hacked links, tons of pop-ups and advertisements show up taking over your screen. You computer may suffer more tricky problems if it stays in the computer for a long time. Thus, it is highly suggested to remove the infection as quickly as possible before your computer suffers from more damages.
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 Start2.me Redirect without your permission. Other malicious activities can be shown on your computer after hijacked are listed below:
1. It can not only change your web pages, but also alter other settings to add toolbars, pop-up advertisements, and bookmarks that you did not create.
2. It can modify the homepage settings of your web browser, more commonly by reducing your internet security options. And the worse thing is it prevents you from changing them back.
3. New toolbars or Favorites are installed that give you icons and links to web pages that you don’t want.
4. It may block you from visiting certain website you’d like to visit and show an error page instead.
5. It will display constant pop-up ads, sometimes in such large amounts that you are not able to close neither the ads nor the browser.
Start2.me 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 Start2.me 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 Start2.me 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
Once the computer is infected by Start2.me, many people may believe that this website is a friendly and useful one. As a contrary, this product is created by the hackers to pursue their evil purposes. It can put your computer in a highly dangerous situation. And it may bunglingly install some malware in your computer to make bad influence to your system. If Start2.me is not deleted promptly, it is capable to cause a complete computer crash. Actually, this browser hijacker can hide itself crafty, making the antivirus programs unable to detect and remove it. In this way, it dives into the computer system without your knowledge. If your computer has already been infected by this Start2.me, you should take effective measures to remove it without any delay.
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 & last updated on September 23, 2014 6:49 am
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