A reader wrote to me last week with two annoying pieces of malware on his system that he wants rid of. The two infections, called FUNMOODS and SEARCHNU, are browser hijackers which take over your web browser and infect your search results, redirecting you to sites you don’t want to visit.
These are both quite complicated infections to remove, so in this newsletter I will show you how to remove FUNMOODS, and next time I’ll cover getting rid of SEARCHNU.
FUNMOODS is a browser extension. To get rid of it, follow these steps:
- Click Start > Control Panel > Programs and Features (Windows 7/Vista) or Add or Remove Programs (Windows XP).
- Select Funmoods and click Remove or Uninstall.
- Open Internet Explorer.
- Press the [Alt] key then click Tools > Add-ons to open the add-ons window.
- Select Funmoods and click Remove or Disable.
- Close Internet Explorer
- Click Start > Control Panel > Internet Options.
- In the Address bar, replace the home page set by FUNMOODS with the home page you’d like to use (e.g. google.com).
- Click OK.
- If you have Internet Explorer 7 or above, open IE then click the down arrow next to the search bar and choose Manage Search Providers or Change Search Defaults.
- Select the search engine you’d like to use by default, then click Close or OK.
- Reset your default home page from the one imposed by FUNMOODS
PS: For more information on removing browser hijackers and other malware, take a look at my book, Windows Internet Security: The Essential Guide. You can order your copy by clicking here.
