How do I get rid of a redirect virus

[David G Baker]

I have tried everything I can think of to get rid of the redirect virus but haven't had any luck. Any one else had any luck?

[Ralph Boumenot]

malwarebytes has a free virus remover you can try that one first

[Rich Engelhardt]

I sent you two PM's that are detailed instructions from PC Advisor. Since it's probably copyrighted I didn't want to post it & because of how a redirect works, a link is usually unusable.
If you follow the instructions, it should clean things up enough that you can get to some of the online virus scanners.

Some of the more benign redirects can be removed simply by going to the Control Panel/Programs and uninstalling them.
Others can be so miserable, you may have to resort to restoring your system back to an earlier point.

[Chuck Wintle]

I have tried everything I can think of to get rid of the redirect virus but haven't had any luck. Any one else had any luck?

where is the redirect sending you to?

[Tom M King]

Get Spyhunter. I think the latest version is 4. It'll find, and remove stuff that other anti-virus software won't. The redirect virus just keeps getting worse, until you can't do anything with the computer. You will probably have to boot in Safe Mode with network, so you can connect to the internet and actually use it, for it to let you go to Spyhunter and download it. When you reboot your computer, keep hitting the F8 key until it lets you select which mode to boot in.

[David Weaver]

I think some are practically terminal.

I had one that wouldn't allow anything to run, and just started over from scratch.

[Sean Troy]

Start in safe mode with networking , update virus/malware software and run them. That might help.

[Steve Rozmiarek]

I just got rid of what I thought was one, turned out it was an extension in chrome. Wifey clicked something she shouldn't have. In chrome it was easy to delete it in the settings once I figured it out.

[David Masters]

I find that I need to remove the hard drive from the infected system these days, insert it into a external drive cabinet, and run the collection of malware and anti-virus scanners against the drive from a non-infected system. I usually use my Mac and spin up a Windows VM to do this, but don't see why you couldn't do it with a real Windows system as long as the auto-read/execute function is disabled in Windows. I can generally remove enough of the virus or malware to prevent it from spawning new copies when I put the drive back into the original computer. From there, I run the malware and anti-virus scanners again to remove the infected Registry entries. Tools I use are Malwarebytes, AVG, Hijackthis, and CCleaner. I'm sure there are others, but I've found these to be effective and all are free.

From the listed issues found from the scanners, I then do a search to see if the reported virus or malware requires additional steps to remove traces from the system. I find an infected system is a day or better project and it would be better many times to just reload a fresh copy of the OS, reinstall the applications, and pull off the data from a backup. But there are a lot of people who don't have the original media to load the OS and applications, and it still surprises me how many people don't backup their data. To date, I've been able to remove any infection I've encountered, but it gets harder and harder to do so.

One advantage I've found by doing this on a Mac is that OS X doesn't honor the NTFS security attributes, so when a piece of malware creates a new administrator level ID, installs itself with the only read/execute authority, and then deletes the ID, I can still delete or modify the infected files. However, natively OS X can read, but not write to NTFS drives. You need to install a driver like Paragon's to provide write access. You can still access and write to NTFS drives in a Windows VM, but Windows will honor the security attributes on the drive.

[Mike Cozad]

This has givin me the best results as well.


I find that I need to remove the hard drive from the infected system these days, insert it into a external drive cabinet, and run the collection of malware and anti-virus scanners against the drive from a non-infected system. I usually use my Mac and spin up a Windows VM to do this, but don't see why you couldn't do it with a real Windows system as long as the auto-read/execute function is disabled in Windows. I can generally remove enough of the virus or malware to prevent it from spawning new copies when I put the drive back into the original computer. From there, I run the malware and anti-virus scanners again to remove the infected Registry entries. Tools I use are Malwarebytes, AVG, Hijackthis, and CCleaner. I'm sure there are others, but I've found these to be effective and all are free.

From the listed issues found from the scanners, I then do a search to see if the reported virus or malware requires additional steps to remove traces from the system. I find an infected system is a day or better project and it would be better many times to just reload a fresh copy of the OS, reinstall the applications, and pull off the data from a backup. But there are a lot of people who don't have the original media to load the OS and applications, and it still surprises me how many people don't backup their data. To date, I've been able to remove any infection I've encountered, but it gets harder and harder to do so.

One advantage I've found by doing this on a Mac is that OS X doesn't honor the NTFS security attributes, so when a piece of malware creates a new administrator level ID, installs itself with the only read/execute authority, and then deletes the ID, I can still delete or modify the infected files. However, natively OS X can read, but not write to NTFS drives. You need to install a driver like Paragon's to provide write access. You can still access and write to NTFS drives in a Windows VM, but Windows will honor the security attributes on the drive.

[Larry Browning]

I worked and worked on removing a redirect virus on SWMBO's computer. Thought I had it a couple of times, but it continued to be slow and would send her to all sorts of places she didn't want to go. I finally gave up and did system refresh which is a new feature of Windows 8. It worked great. It put back the OS like it came from the store, but did not delete her data. I had her back up like on a brand new PC in no time (Well, it took several hours, but it was much less time than I had spent trying to get rid of that stupid virus!)

Say what you will about Windows 8, but it has some nice features, that are not related to those stupid tiles. Some of the backup and restore features are really pretty nice.

[paul cottingham]

Sounds like you should try spybot, in safe mode.

[Jerome Stanek]

I download the free trial of Vipre antivirus and that took care of my wifes

[David G Baker]

I ended up getting rid of the redirect virus (I hope) by doing a scan after I purchased Malwarebytes Pro. It let me know that my "proxy server" had been changed, I set it back to where it should be and so far all is well. The redirect would send me to a Adobe Flash Drive site and claim that my Flash Drive was out of date and would send me to a site that tried to get me to update the drivers on my Windows 7 platform. I did not click on OKAY, I shut the page off and was able (in most cases) to continue on to the site I was trying to load. I will post if I actually did not get rid of the virus after a day or so of use.

[Richard Moran]

Do a System Restore to and Earlier Date and pick a date when all was well. I've had to do this a couple of times. Very annoying and you'll lose whatever happened between those dates unless you get lucky and can save it first.

[David G Baker]

Richard M.
That was the first thing I tried. My computer was previously owned by an elderly gentleman and he never set this computer up to set restore points and I did not realize this and when I tried there were none available. I have been using the computer daily since the 19th without any redirects.