Searchz.co Virus Removal Guide

My browser has been hijacked by Searchz.co and I don’t know how to remove it. I used to clear the cookies and history records when the web browser ran slowly due to some phishing websites. However, I cannot get rid of the redirect virus in the same way this time. Does anyone know how to remove Searchz.co and recover the affected web browser? I need your help!


What is Searchz.co?

Searchz.co is a browser hijacker which appears as a legitimate search engine website to let people do a search with it or display many advertisements. Its design and outfit look professional and quite normal as other legitimate webpage. There is an search bar in the center. If you click on its infected links, unpleasant things may happen. The links on the malicious website are often implanted with dangerous codes. Some of them are advertisement websites which utilize the website to display advertising. As a result, you may fail to find the expected helpful information directly. If you click on some unknown websites in the search results, many other computer infections may be downloaded. It can allow other unknown Trojan or backdoor programs to insert system. For instance, some browser settings and system settings are changed and the computer security levels become lower. In this case, users’ personal information will be at great risk as it may be monitored all the time and stolen at any time if the hackers take action. In this circumstances, malware outside the cyber world will infiltrate the system to harvest your personal information. Sometimes, your personal files could be encrypted by the malware and you couldn’t decrypt them with ease. Those troubles really damage your system to instable and vulnerable.

In general, you may experience the hijack virus when you are launching some web pages. A pop- up may appear on the screen to induce you into changing your home page to the websites which are promoted by the Trojan as soon as you load the page. You may ignore the suggestion if you don’t want. But sometimes you may not realize that this it is a trick and rashly click yes to accept the website being your homepage. Some redirect viruses can even infect your browsers without notice when you visit the websites that have been hacked. If the computer is infected, the browser settings are usually change from default settings to unwanted ones. So, don’t take it for granted that websites are safe to visit. Before visiting a website, please make sure that it’s completely safe. As ordinary anti-virus programs can’t remove this browser hijack virus, manual removal is an effective solution. Please follow the guide given below to manually get rid of the redirect virus. Don’t think that it is ok to keep it on your PC, for it may cause great damage to your system!


How to Manually Remove Searchz.co Virus

Tips: Before you perform the manual removal of Searchz.co, be aware that the removal involves deleting registry files and repairing registry files and re-setting some basic configurations of the operating system. The difficulty for you should be searching for and deleting the virus associated files, since the virus often names its files randomly and would changes the file paths irregularly. Inexperienced users should not try manual way. Therefore, it requires you to have sufficient computer expertise to perform the manual removal. If you are not sure about it, using a specialized tool to deal with it is the best choice.

1. Remove the browser hijacker from the infected computer.

Click on the Start button and select Control Panel. Click on Uninstall a program under the Programs category.
Find out and locate the programs related to Searchz.co browser hijacker. Click on the Uninstall button to remove them all.

2. Launch the infected browser and remove the add-ons or extensions related to the browser hijacker.

Internet Explorer:
Open IE, click on Tools and then select Manage Add-ons. When it opens a window, click on Toolbars and Extensions. Find out the extensions related to the browser hijacker and select them. Then, right-click them and click on the Disable option. Restart IE to finish the procedure.

Google Chrome:
Launch Google Chrome. Click on the Three-bar icon on top-right of the browser, select tools and then Extensions from the list. After that, click Extensions on the left side of the window. Locate the extension related to the browser hijacker, select it and click on the trash icon. Restart the browser to complete the procedure.

Mozilla Firefox:
Start Firefox and click on the tool menu from the top menu. Click on the Add-ons tab to open the configuration window. Then, click Extensions on the left side of this window. Now find out the extensions of the redirect virus and remove them from the browser. Restart the browser to complete the process.

3. Show hidden files and folders.

Go to Control panel again and click on Appearance and Personalization. Then double click on Folder Options. Hit the View tab, tick “Show hidden files, folders and drives” and deselect “Hide protected operating system files (Recommended)” . Click on the OK button to apply the changes.

4. Delete the malicious files of Searchz.co from the local disk.

The files listed below are reference only because the virus may has the ability to changes the names and locations of its files.
%Program Files%\ random
%AppData%\Protector-[rnd].exe
%AppData%\Inspector-[rnd].exe
%AppData%\vsdsrv32.exe

5. Open Registry Editor and delete the registry entries of the browser hijacker..
Press Windows+ R keys simultaneously to open the Run window. Then type “regedit” in the run box and press Enter key to open Registry Editor.

After that, find out and delete all the registry entries of Searchz.co. The below registry entries are also for reference only.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\[random].exe
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\browser hijacker name
HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System ‘DisableRegistryTools’ = 0

6. Restart the infected computer to apply all changes.


Conclusion:

Searchz.co Virus is very nefarious that it can compromise your computer system badly. You should remember that you protect your computer not rely on antivirus programs. You need to be careful when downloading programs from the internet. This can only lead to bigger problems. Before you start to remove the browser hijacker, you may need to think twice for the solutions. So, you should think twice before you get down to the manual removal activity, especially if you are a novice user. The instructions above are for the common infection situation. Searchz.co redirect virus can show in different variations in different versions of computer system. More seriously, it may start its variation gradually. As the above has mentioned, the browser hijacker is a cascaded virus. It can change system files to interrupt the proper function of your computer. The removal of Searchz.co is also good for the proper running of other normal applications and legal system files.