How to Safely Remove the Google Redirect Virus
Imagine, one day you enter a search query in Google, find the site you like, but when you click on it you are led to a different website completely unrelated to what you searched for. If you think that this scenario is impossible, think again. What I have just described to you is a rather common thing these days. It is called the Google Redirect Virus.
As you can probably tell, this is one of the most annoying viruses out there. The typical symptom of this virus is that when you click on a link to a page in Google (or any of the other search engines), this virus makes you go to a page full of spam that is completely unrelated to your search query. There are different things you can do to get rid of this virus, here some of the most safe and successful.
- First try using an anti-virus program. Even if it doesn't remove the virus, it'll at least tell you the name of the file which is useful for later steps.
- If you haven't had this problem for long, try using system restore to restore the system to a date before you got the virus, if the version of the virus you got is not too sophisticated.
- If nothing else worked, go to "Control Panel", find a program called "Device Manager", click on it. Once it opens, click on the "view" button. A drop down menu will appear. Select "Show Hidden Devices", expand all the devices by clicking on the plus sign to the left of each device. Find the name of the file that was found but not removed by your anti-virus program, and click disable. (Warning: if you are not good with computers I advise against doing this without help from someone who does)
Finally, the best way to be safe from the Google Redirect Virus is to avoid getting one in the first place. This is done by making sure that you download programs from sites that you trust, open e-mails from people you know, and have a good anti-virus program that can not only find and remove existing viruses but can also scan shady websites and e-mails to make sure you don't get infected with any computer viruses to begin with.
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