Adobe Flash Update infected Firefox with tons of viruses. Help!
I got with one of those annoying fake Adobe Flash Updates, and unfortunately fell for it and installed it, which has infected Firefox (and Chrome, and IE, for that matter) with tons of viruses that I CANNOT get rid of. I'm on a Windows 7 PC.
Basically, what they do: - Adds "Enhanced Text" everywhere (text is underlined and leads to an ad) - Adds unwanted banners on sites - Frequent pop-ups - Redirects my searches (Google is essentially unusable) - Can't log-in to certain sites (eBay)
The last two are really killing me and making the internet very hard to enjoy. I've run Malwarebytes several times (first a quick scan, then a full scan), as well as TDSSKiller. Both detected malware and deleted them, but nothing changed. As per the internet's advice, I've tried disabling all my extensions/plug-ins, but doing that didn't help either - many reference specific extensions that cause these problems, like "CCodec" or "ghostery" but nothing like that appears in my add-ons menu. I went into Programs and Features and uninstalled anything suspicious-looking (which somehow lead to half that list disappearing? All my programs are still there, but for whatever reason that list shortened significantly), and still nothing.
I'm really at a loss here. None of my browsers are working properly and nothing I do seems to help.
All Replies (3)
Looks like you need to be locked and loaded for a virus to come, or just avoid it.
Can you try those scans in safe mode? Safe mode likely will prevent the malware from running at all during the safe mode session. Windows XP, Vista, 7 instructions: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/start-computer-safe-mode
Windows 8: http://www.howtogeek.com/107511/
Hello, Sorry to hear that you are facing issues with the new update. Typically, if you install the updates from the Adobe site, there will not be any extra add-ons installed. In the future please update Flash using the instructions mentioned below
Recent crashes of certain multimedia contents (this includes Youtube videos, certain flash games and other applications) in conjunction with Firefox are most probably caused by a recent Flash update and/or a malfunctioning browser plugin such as Real Player.
In order to remedy the problem, please perform the steps mentioned in these Knowledge Base articles:
Other, more technical information about these issues can be found under these Links:
Coming to the current issue, can you please confirm if you are seeing these issues when you run Firefox in Safe Mode. Safe Mode is a way wherein most of the plugins and extensions are not loaded (so you get the bare metal Firefox experience). You can try running Firefox in safe mode by following instructions mentioned and let us know if this has helped you.
Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode, which disables most add-ons.
(If you're not using it, switch to the Default theme.)
- On Windows you can open Firefox 4.0+ in Safe Mode by holding the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
- On Mac you can open Firefox 4.0+ in Safe Mode by holding the option key while starting Firefox.
- On Linux you can open Firefox 4.0+ in Safe Mode by quitting Firefox and then going to your Terminal and running: firefox -safe-mode (you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)
- Or open the Help menu and click on the Restart with Add-ons Disabled... menu item while Firefox is running.
Once you get the pop-up, just select "'Start in Safe Mode"
If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, and you need to figure out which one. Please follow the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article for that.
To exit the Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.
When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help other users who have the same problem.
Thank you.