Useful Tips for Removing Search.swagbucks.com Hijacker Virus

Does your homepage keep being rerouted to Search.swagbucks.com while searching online? Cannot get rid of Search.swagbucks.com with your antivirus software? That's because there is no perfect antivirus that can catch all computer infections in the world. Actually, it is the problem not only for your antivirus software, but also for many other even world-leading security applications. Any unsure method is not recommended to remove the virus, but manual removal has always been the most effective way to get rid of it. This step-by-step guide will help you completely remove Search.swagbucks.com. Learn more details.

Search.swagbucks.com(http://search.swagbucks.com/) is a bogus search engine that pretends to be a legitimate domain providing users with all kinds of search content, such as videos, images, and so forth. However, it actually doesn’t perform what it appears to be. Instead of offering useful information for internet users, Search.swagbucks.com is created by cyber criminals to corrupt random computers’ web browser and the contaminated machine seriously both. As soon as this redirect malware sneaks into your machine, it would modify the default browser settings and forcedly change the homepage into http://search.swagbucks.com/ or its relevant website without any permission. At the first impression, people may be confused whether it’s harmful or not due to its decent appearance. It’s designed just like other legit search engines as Google, yahoo, Bing. Please be noticed that there are big difference between them. Search.swagbucks.com contains lots of annoying pops up and even bogus ads products. If you carelessly click on them, you’re very likely to be pointed to its sponsored product with attractive coupon codes or online sales. Definitely the majority of software displayed on the page is harmful, so never do the payment upon the insecure stuff. Instead, take immediate actions to uninstall it from your victimized computer completely as soon as possible.

Generally speaking, Search.swagbucks.com is a malicious browser hijacker that tries to do as much harm as possible to affected machines while the users are browsing online. Once victimized, people may have the complaints that their PCs run extremely slow and it takes much more time to launch the normal programs. In some cases, a few executable programs, take antivirus software for example, will be miserably blocked by such a tricky virus. Fortunately, professional manual solution is highly appreciated to combat this virus without any risk.

Search.swagbucks.com is a big threat to your system

# It comes without any consent and disguises itself in root of the system once installed.
# It can compromise your system and may introduce additional infections like rogue software.
# You may be redirected to some unsafe websites and advertisements which are not trusted.
# The Trojan often takes up high resources and strikingly slow down your computer speed.
# The virus can help the cyber criminals to track your computer and steal your personal information.

How to remove Search.swagbucks.com completely?

Step 1- Remove add-ons:
Internet Explorer
1) Go to 'Tools' → 'Manage Add-ons';
2) Choose 'Search Providers' → choose 'Bing' search engine or 'Google' search engine and make it default;
3) Select 'Search Results' and click 'Remove' to remove it;
4)  Go to 'Tools' → 'Internet Options', select 'General tab' and click 'Use default' button or enter your own website, e.g. Google.com. Click OK to save the changes.

Google Chrome
1) Click on 'Customize and control' Google Chrome icon, select 'Settings';
2) Choose 'Basic Options'.
3) Change Google Chrome's homepage to google.com or any other and click the 'Manage search engines...' button;
4) Select 'Google' from the list and make it your default search engine;
5) Select 'Search Results' from the list remove it by clicking the "X" mark.

Mozilla Firefox
1) Click on the magnifier's icon and select 'Manage Search Engines....';
2) Choose 'Search Results' from the list and click 'Remove' and OK to save changes;
3) Go to 'Tools' → 'Options'. Reset the startup homepage or change it to google.com under the 'General tab';

Step 2- Open Windows Task Manager and close all running processes.
( Methods to open Task Manager: Press CTRL+ALT+DEL or CTRL+SHIFT+ESC or Press the Start button->click on the Run option->Type in taskmgr and press OK.)

Step 3- Show hiden files of Search.swagbucks.com
1. Open Folder Options: clicking the Start button> Control Panel> Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Folder Options. After that clicking the View tab.
2. Under Advanced settings, click Show hidden files and folders, uncheck Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) and then click OK.

Step 4- Search for all infected files and registry entries and remove them from your computer as follows:
%AllUsersProfile%\{random.exe\
C:\WINDOWS\system32\giner.exe
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\random
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\run\random
HKCU\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run |Regedit32

How to prevent from being infected by virus like Search.swagbucks.com?

(1)Be cautious when clicking some link. It can point your browser to download threats or visit malicious web site.
(2) Don't download unknown "free" software
(3) Avoid opening unknown e-mail attachments
(4) Don’t get access to illegal online contents such as gambling or porn.

In conclusion: If you haven’t sufficient expertise in dealing with program files, processes, .dll files and registry entries, it may lead to mistakes damaging your system permanently. If you are not very good at computer, you are recommended to ask help from an online professional expert here to avoid false operation of crashing your computer or from some friends who are very familiar with manual virus removal.