Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

some websites e.g. facebook suddenly change into a page of search.softonic.com

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Rene1944

more options

the website first comes up normally and then changes to a search.softonic.com search result page of a certain item. This happens not only with facebook but with some newspaper sites like www.telegraaf.nl, www.fd.nl etc. I have to go to internet explorer to see my facebook page, which I don't like being a long time firefox user.!

the website first comes up normally and then changes to a search.softonic.com search result page of a certain item. This happens not only with facebook but with some newspaper sites like www.telegraaf.nl, www.fd.nl etc. I have to go to internet explorer to see my facebook page, which I don't like being a long time firefox user.!

Chosen solution

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.

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.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

See also:

Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (2)

more options

Chosen Solution

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.

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.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

See also:

more options

Found it. Softonic was an extension I was not aware of. Removed and problem solved. Great!