Default search in Google Chrome locked to smartsputnik - google-chrome

I have deleted and created a new user, cleared history, cleared cache even uninstalled and then installed chrome again, but nothing. Any solution for that.
I have seen some software while searching on different websites but em afraid they can also b some sort of malware, what should i do, any Help......

You can change registry in Windows by running regedit.exe, usually you don't need external tools for that. A quick search for "smartsputnik" in regedit reveals that some Chrome-related entry contains a link to it. Changing it back to what it should be, that is e.g. what Chrome uses for its search query, should fix the issue. For my colleague it was
{google:baseURL}search?q=%s&{google:RLZ}{google:originalQueryForSuggestion}{google:assistedQueryStats}{google:searchFieldtrialParameter}{google:iOSSearchLanguage}{google:searchClient}{google:sourceId}{google:contextualSearchVersion}ie={inputEncoding}
After the change, you can delete the offender from search engines as well, that seemed to be impossible while it was the default. That helped to restore Chrome itself, but this blog post says it will also append "http://smartsputnik.ru/?ri=1&uid=" as the argument to random shortcuts. That could be devious, but I've not observed that yet, will check and see.
BTW, my colleague did not install any software recently, so it looks like this malware learned a new trick.

Related

Chrome is not clearing cache

I am working on a new site and whenever I change CSS settings chrome will not accept those changes unless I close out of chrome completely with Task manager and relaunch it. I have a tried quite a few things. Below is a list of things I've tried:
Versioning the CSS file (I am using a PHP date stamp at the end of the CSS file
Enabling "Clear Cache while developer window is open" in the Developer console
Using Ctrl + F5 to clear cache on refresh
Going to Application and Clear Storage in the developer Console
Clearing Cache folder in local AppData
Deleting CSS file from stie, refreshing, and readding file.
Incognito mode
Adding Launch options to chrome shortcut --disk-cache-dir=null
Adding Browser Plugins to delete cache.
Anyone have any ideas how to help? It is extremely annoying and inefficient to close chrome every time I want to check a CSS change. Another annoyance is that I am trying to listen to music in the browser so if I close chrome I have to go back and get my music playing again and it's just as of now extremely annoying and way more time consuming than I want.
I've tried looking at other articles online about cache busting and other articles on Stack Overflow but I've tried to do most of what they suggest and I haven't seen any positive outcome yet. Most articles say to add some sort of random string or version on the end of the CSS file as a GET request but that isn't working though I know that has worked for me in the past.
pres f12 > f1 > network > disable cache (while DevTools is open). This should solve your problem
Development server was running various caching tools though they should have been turned off. After disabling them chrome started to work better and most of the time CTRL+F5 did the trick.
"clearing cache" is not as easy as it should be. Instead of clearing cache on my browsers, I realized that "touching" the server files cached will actually change the date and time of the source file cached on the server (Tested on Edge, Chrome and Firefox) and most browsers will automatically download the most current fresh copy of whats on your server (code, graphics any multimedia too). I suggest you just copy the most current scripts on the server and "do the touch thing" solution before your program runs, so it will change the date of all your problem files to a most current date and time, then it downloads a fresh copy to your browser:
<?php
touch('/www/sample/file1.css');
touch('/www/sample/file2.css');
touch('/www/sample/file2.css');
?>
then ... the rest of your program...
It took me some time to resolve this issue (as many browsers act differently to different commands, but they all check time of files and compare to your downloaded copy in your browser, if different date and time, will do the refresh), If you can't go the supposed right way, there is always another usable and better solution to it. Best Regards and happy camping. By the way touch(); or alternatives work in many programming languages inclusive in javascript bash sh php and you can include or call them in html.
I used to have the same problem, and I believe it's a (pretty annoying) bug with chrome. You can use the CSS Reloader Chrome Extension to solve it. Not ideal, but better
If you are trying out new CSS updates, I suggest using Chrome's "Inspect" function to dynamically update CSS settings and observe the results interactively. This may save some time during update cycles as compared to manual edits alone.
Another option to try is to define "cache-control" meta tags in your head section. For development/testing, you may want to have no caching. For a real website, you may want to have a shorter age limit. Refer to the following SO Q&A.
Using meta tags to turn of caching in all browsers?

How to remove offers4u(Adware) completely from Google chrome on windows 8.1?

When I visit the websites,this adware is showing too many ads, & it covers all the webpage.I tried to uninstall it, and block it by chrome extensions but it doesn't work. I tried different software to remove it, even I uninstalled chrome and installs a new chrome still it is showing bulk of ads. What should I do? Please help.
I'm not sure this will be applicable, as I had to fight different "brand" of adware, but I suppose it's usually all the same around.
First of all I highly recommend doing a complete scan with Malwarebytes Antimalware, as it mostly does recognize adware as malware.
If that is not enough, searching the filesystem and also windows registry and removing any files and keys connected to it usually works. You may have to do that in safe mode, if the adware runs some service or process on the background. That said, do look at the running services aswell.
The rest applies only if the adware changes your homepage, which a quick google search says it doesn't:
(Be of course careful to not remove parts of your browser or system - even the registry contain homepage settings, in that case, rewrite it to a homepage of your choice, instead of completely removing it.)
Also, when reinstalling chrome, did you remove all your configurations etc. as well? Check for homepage and default search engine configurations as well as all the chrome links (icons on your desktop and start menu etc.), which can have a homepage written after the application location.
The key is to find the right keyword to search for - I think in my case it was the "company" that produced the adware, whose name I probably found in the name of the homepage the adware set. But I'm not sure I remember that right.
Please do inquire if you need some more clarification.
it is because your pc has any backdoor services installed so just identify unknown services and delete them and this malware set chrome default search engine with any unknown search engine so delete this search engine from chrome and change your desire search engine for that purpose follow this tutorial
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuM1tjncumE
which has step by step guide to Manually remove any google chrome malware virus related to search engine without using any software.
search engine default redirect virus examples are
safefinder.com
safesearch.ch
Hoho Search virus
mystartsearch.com
web search
feed sonic search
etc

Slightsearch hijacking google chrome reset not working

I recently got malware installed on my PC that contained software that infected my google chrome, by hijacking my default search engine. I tried:
Removing newly installed programs from PC, using windows utility.
Using Microsoft essentials and hitman pro to fully scan my computer (removed 3 malware of which one was a program and the other adware)
Removing the newly created extension in google chrome.
I tried to change my search engine back to default but I states that the administrator of the program has rights to change the search engine. I then:
Reset my chrome, and restarted my PC. Didn't work.
Then went to registry and deleted all traces of slightsearch and any keys relating to default search engine of chrome.
Restarted PC and nothing has changed at all. My home page is working as normal and I can search google when searching using the URL bar then it redirects to slightsearch.
Lastly, this malware even stared showing me ads on my desktop, when not in Chrome. Scanning and removing the malicious files solved this issue, but the search engine issue still exists.
Please help me solve this issue. And with all due respect, please do not give me the usual tips for removing popups or adware, because as already stated I have done all of these steps. Will appreciate any new solutions.
Regards
Ok so I eventually fixed the problem.
I had to delete files under c:\Windows\System32\GroupPolicyUsers
Checked all the files contained in GroupPolicyUsers and then deleted those that related to chrome and that was messing with my Registry.
Restarted chrome and now all is fixed!

Making Google Chrome leave itself alone

Let me preface this question by saying: It's crazy. I know it is. But the requirement is not mine, it's someone else's, and I'm trying to honor it.
I need to install a months-out-of-date version of Google Chrome so I can run repeated tests against it. But it's proving to be surprisingly difficult to turn Chrome updates off.
I did the trick of disabling the "Google Update" plugin in chrome://plugins. After that, I uninstalled Chrome and installed the old version. I double-checked that the version was the old version and that updating was non-functional ("error 3"). I didn't even see "Google Update" listed in chrome://plugins at all after this. So I thought I was good.
Then just now, I fired up Chrome to look at it again, and it was back to the newest version!
Is there something I overlooked? Are they doing some kind of black magic here?
Windows
For Microsoft Windows, here is the simplest and lowest-impact solution I have found.
Create a text file with these lines:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Update]
"AutoUpdateCheckPeriodMinutes"=dword:00000000
"UpdateDefault"=dword:00000000
Save it to a file ending with ".reg" somewhere on your desktop. Double-click it to install new registry keys.
This disables automatic updates, and when you open "About Google Chrome" from the tool menu, you get the helpful message "Updates are disabled by the administrator."
Mac
(Instructions anyone may want to add for Mac OS can go here...)
Don't do this.
Really. I wasn't kidding. Updates are important.
See #1.
You're still here, so I can only assume that you're crazy enough to really want to turn off updates: http://support.google.com/installer/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146164 explains how you can disable updates via policy. Editing registry entries locally should be effective.

Chrome 22 Developer Tools - Global Sources Search not working right (ctrl-shift-f)

this morning I noticed my Chrome updated to Chrome 22 and that the search in the top right has been removed and can now be accessed with ctrl-f.
I also noticed that ctrl-shift-f is no longer working as expected... (but this is inconsistent)
The global search has been a huge time saver for me, and now sometimes it doesn't work until I've viewed a script at least once.
For example, I have 5 scripts that I know all contain "fn_init"
I search for fn_init and nothing comes up.
I open one of those scripts and then ctrl-shift-f again, and finally get a matching result for just the one file...
Is this working as intended? Am I missing an option or something? My dev tools config options are:
General
Disabled cached
Sources
Show folders checked
Search in content scripts checked
Also: how can I install an older version of Chrome and stop it from updating automatically?
To get an older version of Chrome your best bet is to find a build of Chromium from https://chromium-build.appspot.com/p/chromium/console however if this if for devtools stability you are missing out on a lot of new features and bug fixes.
As for Search across all files it is still there and CTRL-SHIFT-F on Windows and CMD-OPT-F on Mac. See Addy Osmani's post https://plus.google.com/115133653231679625609/posts/e4W2kdrFJY9
If you find issues as bugs, it is better to raise the issue on http://crbug.com/new as it will get direct attention from the engineering team there.