Finderactive Removal - Help

[MoneyAddyct]

Hey. Maybe you guys can help me. Usually, I can type a search phrase directly into the navigation bar, hit enter, and the search phrase will be brought up through Google (as I'm sure you all know). Now it appears as though my search is being routed first through www.finderactive.com. It will still have the search results from Google present, but it's clear that it's not actually Google's site. There's literally no information available for finderactive so I'm not sure what to do other than what I've already done: I did an entire system scan using McAfee, AVG, Ad-Aware, Spybot-S/D, and SuperAntiSpyware -- nothing was found! Any ideas?

[old np]

-Type about:config in the location bar, press Enter. Find "keyword.URL" and make sure it refers to Google (reset if necessary).
-Try opening Firefox in Safe Mode to see if it still happens
-If you go to google.com directly, do you get redirected?

[MoneyAddyct]

Keyword.url did not in fact refer to google.com, but it did refer to finderactive.com. When I changed it back to google, it worked! How do you think it got changed in the first place? Is there something else I need to do now (ie, delete some files or make a change in the registry, etc etc) or is the problem completely solved?

[the-edmeister]

More than likely some extension you installed changed that preference. I'd be curious to see a list of your installed extensions to try to track down the culprit. Actions like that aren't to my liking, and user's of extensions should be warned ahead of time.


Ed

[MoneyAddyct]

I've only installed 3 extensions and they are:

All-In-One Gestures 0.18.0
Answers 2.2.21
Menu Editor 1.2.3

These were the same extensions I was using previously, before I reformatted my hard-drive about 2 days ago and I never had this problem happen. Do you think one of them did in fact cause it?

[MoneyAddyct]

Actually, it doesnt quite work. I need the URL for google's search results (where it would plug-in what I type into the nav bar). It just brings me to google.com.

[MoneyAddyct]

Nevermind. Found it. But I'd still like to know what made finderactive or whatever it was the default.

[MoneyAddyct]

Anyone?

[MoneyAddyct]

??

[100z]

Hey. Maybe you guys can help me. Usually, I can type a search phrase directly into the navigation bar, hit enter, and the search phrase will be brought up through Google (as I'm sure you all know). Now it appears as though my search is being routed first through www.finderactive.com. It will still have the search results from Google present, but it's clear that it's not actually Google's site. There's literally no information available for finderactive so I'm not sure what to do other than what I've already done: I did an entire system scan using McAfee, AVG, Ad-Aware, Spybot-S/D, and SuperAntiSpyware -- nothing was found! Any ideas?

Try this :

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/ ... 80195.html

__


Double click the blank space, in the Tab Bar, or right click a tab and select New Tab.
This will open a new, blank Tab.
In the Address Bar, type; about:config
Click Enter.
Scroll down to, and double click, keyword.URL.
In the box that opens, enter what's in the Code box below: (you can copy and paste it)
CODE
http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m ... e=UTF-8&q=

Click OK.
This will restore the Google "I feel lucky" search.

Alternatively, you can set it to
CODE
http://www.google.com/search?&q=

This is the general Google search string.
Now any time you enter a word in the address bar and press Enter it will take you to a Google page showing you the results of the search for that term.

[finny]

for me, this was the behavior in both ie and firefox
there were two bogus entries my hosts file (c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts)

66.98.148.65 auto.search.msn.com
66.98.148.65 auto.search.msn.es

Remove these.
Also, you need to do the auto:config step like ppl said above to make firefox search using google again.

The hijack worked by directing all traffic for auto.search.msn.com to 66.98.148.65 (which is finderactive.com).

Hope this helps. I don't know how it got there either.

[j2p2f2]

Hey im pretty sure this was caused by the recent installation of WMP11 because right after i installed that, i had two bogus entries, both with .msn. root domains in my hosts and i had that finderactive thingy in my mozilla. i think IE wanted to use that to copy mozillas google search.

[Judas Iscariot]

found out how to fix it and if your wondering how you got it i got it i dont know.i got it from browsing google anime pics. avg found it as a rogue hijacker. it then showed where it affected which was mozilla.exe. which explains why spybot and avg virus search couldnt find it.

i got rid of it by running uninstaller on firefox and then going in and deleting its contents inside its install path C:\programfiles/mozilla delete everythign in there

after that go to start and run. type regedit go to find and look for mozilla you need to find its entry that is listed as mozilla firefox.exe or somthing in that nature delete all you can find that would be under mozilla. then reinstall mozilla and do custom install. when it asks to (would you like to import anything over to firefox tell it NO

there you go this should solve the finderactive problem

[LIMPET235]

Thanks for the feedback but this thread is almost 2 years old.
I doubt whether the OP is still monitoring it.
Locking,