How to remove ZoneAlarm Search redirect from Google Chrome, Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox? Why your homepage is replaced and your browser is redirected to http://search.zonealarm.com randomly? Follow the guides below to find out an effective manual way to completely get rid of ZoneAlarm Search.
ZoneAlarm Search (also called search.zonealarm.com redirect) is a browser hijacker and you may get this annoying thing from unsafe freeware, shareware like ZoneAlarm or advertising-supported programs such as various browser add-ons or toolbars. Recently this problem frustrated many PC users and they complain whenever they type something into the search bar, or a wrong url, it goes to zone alarm search terms where before it was google. This website doesn’t provide any real search engine features, instead it only shows you crazy ads and you couldn’t stop it.
When this hijacker is installed, it can alter the search page of your browsers such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome and redirect the user to its own page. It sets itself to be your default search engine in your browser and prevents you from changing it to websites you want. This domain is designed as a phony search engine, offering fraudulent search results. Whatever the browser you are using with and performing a search, you still can’t get the information you want as the browser will keep redirecting you to search.zonealarm.com without your approval. Even worse, it can constantly use your internet connection to send your private information to remote servers, as well as receive ads and pop-ups from third party servers, which causes much slower internet connection speed and overall connection instability. Considering it runs high risk for the compromised computers, it is strongly suggested users to uninstall this hijacker as soon as possible.
It is said that you can easily get infected with this redirect virus when you visit illegal websites, download porno movies and other unidentified programs and open spam emails. You may still do these above activities even if you are aware of their dangers because you think your legitimate antivirus software can take care of the threats. But as a matter of fact, the creators of this browser redirect virus are so familiar with the functions of antivirus tools that they can make it escape from the detection and removal of any virus protectors. Thus, it is suggested users to follow the manual guide to delete ZoneAlarm Search hijacker.
Considering search.zonealarm.com redirect can’t be fixed by any security tools, uses can use the manual guide below to fix this issue without any risk.
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
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Settings\
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Temp
ZoneAlarm Search belongs to browser hijacker that is known to attack Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer, and can function in most versions of Windows, including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. It can be installed by hazardous free applications, ad-supporting programs or shareware, which include a variety of browser plug-ins and toolbars. Once running, it hacks your browser seriously by redirecting your web search results to malicious web pages and changing your homepage and browser settings casually. Every time you surf the web, the browser hijacker displays numerous pop ups on your screen terribly. And it changes your homepage to search.zonealarm.com against your will. ZoneAlarm Search is absolutely an unwanted thing that must be removed as quickly as possible.
Kindly Reminder: If you failed to remove the virus, please contact YooCare PC experts now for instant help to avoid any mistake such as data lost and system crash during the manual removal.
Published by on June 19, 2013 4:01 am, last updated on November 6, 2013 5:09 am
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