search.conduit.com has hyjacked my homepage, Please Help!

1. In your browser's Tools menu, select Internet Options.
2. Click the General tab.
3. In the Home page section at the top of the dialog, change to your home page, and click "OK".

Thanks,
The Conduit Team

Thanks for your 'help' but as I stated in my first message,I have repeatedly reset my homepage to what I want, but everytime I restart Explorer the homepage is again highjacked to search.conduit.com.
You signed your reply as 'Conduit Team', if you people think its somehow ethical to put this malware on the web, at least you should offer a way to undo it! After this BS it will be a cold day in hell before I will use your search engine or anything related to your site.

Do you mean Internet Explorer, or something else?

If you mean Internet Explorer check your Add-ons, (Tools > Manage Add-ons). Look for any that suggest they may be a Conduit add-on or toolbar and disable it. Close that Manage Add-ons Window. For good measure, goto the View menu option in the menu bar, (if you cannot see it, press the ALT key on the keyboard), then Tools > Toolbars, then look for any Conduit toolbar and de-select it.

If Conduit shows as a Search bar in IE, right click it and see what options there are. Disable if you can.

Then back to Tools > Internet Options, General tab and make sure there is 'only one' entry for your preferred home page. If there are two joined together or on two lines, delete the unwanted one.

See if any of that helps.

If you have something other than IE, then look for similar options.

Mark

The problem was only in IE. You were right there was an addon from conduit, when i disabled it I could then change my homepage back to what I had been using (I was using Tools>General. . . all along to do this), but after removing the addon it held when I restarted IE then later when I rebooted the computer.

Thanks so much for your help!

BTW, is there a way I can block addons from being added without my permission?

Notifies you of addons, ActiveX and startup runs among other things. It is a very small app often considered a nice adition to your existing security software.

http://www.winpatrol.com/download.html

Yea, I don't know of any problems with McAfee. A couple years ago I wasn't happy with the speed of their handling a false positive report. I did eventually made contact with a concerned member of their team and they updated their current signature files immediately.

Ultimately, it was a learning experience for me. During a new release downloads skyrocket so I now run all our .exe's through VirusTotal.com to make sure none of the 40+ companies incorrectly flag WinPatrol as a threat. It's not a good time for a false positive so I wasn't very patient and gave McAfee more grief then they deserved.

While I don't necessarily recommend their products the folks I have met from McAfee work hard and are sincere in their efforts to create the best software possible.

Bill

"BTW, is there a way I can block addons from being added without my permission? <div class="inter-pagination collapsable"> </div><div class="inter-pagination collapsable">I'm not so sure that you didn't give your permission. For instance Brother Soft uses the Conduit Downoader, and when you click on the downloaded icon you're clicking on the Conduit downloader/installer. There are check boxes to uncheck if you don't want the toolbar. You see, you have to opt-out, you don't opt-in. Your permission to install their crapware toolbar is assumed. Whenever you download an application with a toolbar bundled alog with it, and then install it, you're supposed to be given the choice as to whether or not you want the crapware as well. As for installers that don't ask you for permission, probably an application such as Kaspersky Internet Security 2012 would hlp, but only if Kaspersky considers the add-on to be harmful, in which case it won't let you install it even if you want to. Using a computer without a good security application is like spending a week in a cat house in Bangkok without rubbers. Also, get rid of Windows XP. Its security is dreadful.
</div>

I run Tred Micro. This usually stops stuff like this, but it didn't.
As far as I'm concerned: if you say NO durng installation of something, then it should not load By doing so anyway they are no better than hackers.
If it rewrites your registy, it is hacking
If it is set up in such a way that you can cancel it being the default page on any browsers, it is hacking.
I was NOT asked or informed that my registry would be modified, my computer would be modified, all of my browsers would be modiied and would not be able to change them.
That I would likely be left in a situation to have to reload Windows

As far as I'm concerned, the next email I send after this writting this will be to FBI to inform them of this. They hate hackers and people who send out virus/trojans as much as the rest of us.

Up yours Conduit and anyone who makes excuses for what they do.

EVERY TIME I start up IE - which yes - I HAVE to use - I get a message telling me that my search options have been corrupted by a program. After much research, I found out it's our friend, "conduit.search.com."
It is not listed in add-ons. It is not listed in Programs in Control Panels. It is not listed as anything anywhere. I've tried every option I can find for removal, and am now about to pay Norton geeks a good sum of money to get rid of this problem.

Is there another reliable way to rid my world of this anxiety-causing nuisance?

Thank you.

My computer was fine last night. I turned it on tonight and clicked on my Chrome icon. My homepage was hijacked to www.conduit.com. I tried your Internet Explorer tips but they didn't work on Google Chrome. I ran Trend Micro and Malwarebyes and still no success.

I have used Norton for years and never had a problem. I bought a new laptop and it came with Trend Micro, which I just activated a few days ago.

My computer is a Dell Inspiron laptop with Windows 7 Operating System and Google Chrome browser.

Thank you for your help.

tbranda..

Conduit usually comes about as the result of having installed 3rd party software In all likelihood, you weren't aware of what came bundled with it. It may come in the form of a toolbar, or maybe an extension which has the ability to change your browser's homepage settings, your default startup pages or possibly your search engine. ZoneAlarm was/is a good example. ⇐ I don't know if it presently does.

If that's the case, you shouldn't have a problem figuring out what you recently installed. You also have the option of rolling back the system to see if it makes a difference.

You say you tried what was suggestrd for Internet Explorer. It might help to know what (and how) you tried. Did you go to Programs and Features to see if the Conduit Toolbar is listed?

Did you try resetting Chrome's homepage? See Set your home page under #2.

I don't have Chrome installed, but from what I found with various searches, if Chrome is opening to the Conduit page:

Click on the Wrench in the top right corner. Then Settings>On Startup. Next to the button for "Open a specific page or set of pages", click on "Set pages". Hover over the URL until you see an "X" appear to the right side of the URL. Remove it, if there.

After clicking on the Wrench, also try clicking Settings>Search> Manage search engines. Check the list of "Default search engines", "Other search engines", and "Search engines added by extensions". If you find anything related to Conduit, or something else which shouldn't be there - remove it. Also see Set your default search engine.

Letting us know what you previously tried and what behavior it's causing with Chrome, would better help us help you.

Best of luck..
Carol

EVERY TIME I start up IE - which yes - I HAVE to use - I get a message telling me that my search options have been corrupted by a program. After much research, I found out it's our friend, "conduit.search.com."
It is not listed in add-ons. It is not listed in Programs in Control Panels. It is not listed as anything anywhere. I've tried every option I can find for removal, and am now about to pay Norton geeks a good sum of money to get rid of this problem.

My search provider is now permanently defaulted to "bing," regardless of my adding additional search engines and trying to choose yahoo or Norton Safe Search.

I have deleted the one "conduit" registry. No luck! It has still corrupted my search info and tells me that EVERY time I launch IE9.

Is there a truly effective way to rid my world of this anxiety-causing nuisance?

Thank you.

All you need to do is:

- Open IE -> tools -> internet options
- In the General tab -> search section, click on settings
You can now change/remove search providers

I have tried this. The condiut search is there, but when you click on it, it will not give you option to remove/delete it (the remove button remains greyed out).

The easiest way to prevent it happening again is to first go through the Internet Options tab (location dependant on what browser you are running) change to the home page you want to use and click "Apply"

Then ........MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ADMINISTRATOR PRIVILAGES

1. Click Start, click Run, and then type gpedit.msc.
2. Under Local Computer Policy, expand User Configuration, expand Administrative Templates, expand Windows Components, expand Internet Explorer then scroll down to and double click Disable changing homepage settings.
3. Change from "Not Configured" to "Enabled" and type in the home page you wish to use in the box below.
4. Click "Apply"
5. Restart browser.

This will stop the homepage from being changed again. But you will have to repeat this process if you want to make the changes yourself.

Hope this helps

Iain

Now how do we sue you and internethelper? Is this in cooperation with Marissa Mayer?

I had the same problem with my Chrome browser. My preferred search engine had been changed to BING, as well. Changing things back in 'Options' did not stay changed.

Download and run both of the free spyware removal tools from the links below:

Hitman Pro
http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro/

Malwarebytes
http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html?part=dl-10804572&subj=dl&tag=button

Hope this helps.

Grif

to get rid of search conduit you go to the wrench bar in the top right hand corner, click on settings and 'on the startup' section select open a specific page or a set of pages and set your page to google.com or your preferred search engine:)

There is a 'remove' link under conduit search at my homepage. I pressed on it and it worked...

In the first para I share my history with this malware and some conclusions. The second para contains instructions as I understand them

Had a similar problem with Win7, Chrome, and IE. I went to a website which required Flash Player as a plug-in. I searched for Adobe Flash and clicked on the top link, but it was not what it purported to be. I restarted the computer when I saw that Optimum Installer (!) was downloading White Smoke toolbar, but the restart did not prevent installation. The Chrome browser recognized White Smoke and automatically stopped it but White Smoke somehow prevented IE from telling me in White Smoke was installed, although I could not change my home page to anything but Conduit Search. Apparently Optimum Installer installs Search Protect by Conduit, then when a user opens a browser Search Protect installs White Smoke as an add-on or plug-in in the browser. I looked at several online Conduit/White Smoke removal instructions but I had already tried everything they suggested except for a malware removal tool.

Here is what seems to work. Save all work and close everything. Use system restore from Control Panel. Let the computer restart. Do not open a browser. Open Control Panel and open Programs and Features. Find Search Protect or anything else by Conduit and uninstall it. Look for White Smoke and if it exists uninstall it. Restart the computer. Open any browser and confirm that your regular homepage comes up, not search by conduit. If that does not work it looks like a malware removal tool must be used. In the past I have used Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware with success. Good luck.

This response (below my post) from the conduit people is not complete. Yes, you can use Tools at the top of your screen to disable the conduit search engine. However, the specious conduit malware that you inadvertently downloaded to your computer also corrupts Internet Explorer. So even if you 1) disable conduit as the search engine and 2) re-enable Internet Explorer, Internet Explorer still won't work. I know because this happened to me.

Your only option to get rid of conduit altogether and re-enable Internet Explorer is to do a system restore. I did this this morning. It took about 15 minutes and completely corrected all my problems. Internet Explorer works fine now and conduit.com is no longer listed on the Options/Tools bar as a search engine option. Thank God.
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How to change your homepage


by YL7 - 12/11/10 8:59 AM

In Reply to: search.conduit.com has hyjacked my homepage, Please Help! by ceebeeeeee


1. In your browser's Tools menu, select Internet Options.
2. Click the General tab.
3. In the Home page section at the top of the dialog, change to your home page, and click "OK".

Thanks,
The Conduit Team

I had tried everything and FINALLY I figured what worked on my computer.
first open up home page, click on tools, click on internet options and then type in what you want to be your home page ex. msn.com click apply and click OK. It worked for me after hours of trying almost all suggestions.

... a couple of years ago...

http://forums.cnet.com/7726-6132_102-5044254.html

http://forums.cnet.com/7726-6132_102-5044373.html

Time to lock this one.

Hope this helps.

Grif