Search bar and ads won't go away
I had the SweetIM problems and the toolbar is gone but there is a search bar next to my tabs that won't go away and now I have ads on every website I go to. I have a picture of the search bar but I don't know how to upload it.
All Replies (1)
You can't attach a screenshot to the first post that starts a thread, but you can do that in subsequent replies.
Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance).
- Do not click the Reset button on the Safe mode start window or otherwise make changes.
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Safe+Mode
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes
Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
You need to scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
- http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
- http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Microsoft Safety Scanner
- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page
- http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
See also:
- "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked