text: istart.webssearches.com | compudoumi
  Those of you who have encountered things like Nation Zoom or Aartemis before will probably ask: is this the same crap? Yep, unfortunately, istart.webssearches.com is from the same group as all the previous infections from Qvo6 family. However, there's one stark difference. This new browser hijacker comes with a Control Panel ENTRY. Can you imagine that? I mean, when you open a list of installed programs on Control Panel, Webssearches is there, or "Webssearches uninstaller" more likely. It kind of gives you an impression that you can remove istart.webssearches.com on your own, even if afterwards you need to restore browser settings and what not.
  But there's also a catch to this. You see, some users are okay with it as long as they restore their browser settings. Here we have to make a detour and talk a little about how istart.webssearches.com gets set as your default search engine and home page and yada, yada you know the entire thing already, right? So there, in the case of previous infections, it wasn't that easy to get rid of the home page itself. With istart.webssearches.com, you sort of can restore browser settings manually, but make no mistake – browser hijacker files remain in your system and that is easy to check just by opening the Internet Explorer.
  Check this out: when you open Internet Options on Internet Explorer and click "Use Default" button, you should technically as msn.com or any other website the browser has come with as your default home page. However, if you have been infected with istart.webssearches.com, if you click "Use Default" istart.webssearches.com will be set as your default home page automatically.
  Uh-oh. That's a problem. Even if you set Google or any other page as default one manually, it still means that some browser hijacker files are still present on your computer.
  So how do we remove it? To be honest, manual removal might be a bit too complicated, and I myself am not too confident in dealing with Windows Registry, but it's always possible to remove istart.webssearchers.com and similar browser hijackers from computers by resorting to professional malware removal tools. Of course, if you only care about restoring your default home page, you can simply refer to the instructions below, but any security-minded user would want this infection off his/her computer completely.
  Wait for Charm bar to appear and click Settings (the cogwheel).
  Go to Control Panel and under Programs click Uninstall a program.
  Highlight Webssearches uninstaller and press Uninstall.
  Navigate to Control Panel and access Add or remove programs.
  Delete Quick Start from Toolbars and Extensions.
  Set a new default search engine and then delete istart.webssearches.com.
  Delete istart.webssearches.com from the list and press OK.
  Next to "When Firefox starts" choose "Show my homepage" and press OK.
  Remove Quick Start from Extensions. Restart your browser.
  Go to Extensions and remove Quick Start from the list.
  Click Set pages, delete istart.webssearches.com and type in a new home page address. Press OK.
  Go to Manage search engines under Search.
  Set a new default search engine, remove istart.webssearches.com and press Done.
  This entry was posted in computer infection, computer safety and tagged adware, browser hijacker, computer security, Internet, istart.webssearches.com, remove webssearches, webssearches, webssearches removal by compudoumi. Bookmark the permalink.