Highjacked By Hao123.Th

[sms747]

Both firefox and IE now have this annoying thai hao123 start up page, resetting it does not work. Done scans with malwarbytes, registry cleaners and spyware detectors but to no avail. Anyone had this and got rid of it?

[LuckyLew]

I had that happen before

Clear recent history from rowsers

Relaunch browsers and you should be ok

[riker333]

1 go into control panel select programs and features and find the hao 123 and uninstall

2 still in control panel go to internet options and reset your home page to whatever you want reboot and it will be gone.

[sysardman]

Have you checked (Firefox) in Tools - Options - General tab that your home page has possibly been set to Hao123.Th. It's a common practice for many sites to try and impose themselves as your startup page.

[Gary A]

I had Babylon and Claro take over my Fiirefox browser and I tried everything I knew including manually deleting those names from my registry using regedit. I uninstalled Firefox and downloaded and installed it again. I searched for those names on my entire hard drive and deleted what I found. They were still there in the Firefox browser. I again uninstalled Firefox and am using Chrome with no problems.

Why would Firefox allow those invaders to take over the browser? There are many complaints on Firefox forums so they HAVE to be aware of this problem. As long as Firefox allows these malware hijackers to install themselves, I'm done with Firefox.

Edited August 18, 2012 by Gary A

[forgetit]

i just got the over to install this when i installed a program that i downloaded form softtonic.com. i just selected the custom installation and deselected the installation of this program

[MJCM]

Maybe this post helps:

http://www.thaivisa....ed-by-hao123th/

Edited August 18, 2012 by MJCM

[bendejo]

Even if you uninstall FF your settings will be kept.

Your settings (in Windows 7) will be under

C:\Users\your_user-name-here\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

Move this dir somewhere else temporarily, and all your own personal data will be gone from FF, such as bookmarks, addins, etc.

So, uninstall FF, move the dir mentioned above, do a clean re-install of FF. The first time you run FF afterwards it will create a new settings dir. If the crud is still redirecting your page you know it is not just your settings causing it to happen.

[happynthailand]

easy fix.

1- on "Mozilla Firefox start page" -

2 -right click on start page,hold down right button

3 -drag and drop start page to the little house in the upper right hand corner of main screen

4 - will ask you if you want this to be your home page "YES"

5 - done

[NHJ]

you can use ADW cleaner, it'll solve your problem, works also for babylon and many other programs/search engines/toolbars.

[sms747]

you can use ADW cleaner, it'll solve your problem, works also for babylon and many other programs/search engines/toolbars.

All ADW cleaner seems to do is list everything on the HD with no options. Tried most of the other suggestions as well nothing worked so far.

[rics21]

Guess u got yourself into those thai semi porn sites. Thai IT guys seems to do well with spyware.

Sent from my XT910 using Thaivisa Connect App

[xen]

Guess u got yourself into those thai semi porn sites. Thai IT guys seems to do well with spyware.

Sent from my XT910 using Thaivisa Connect App

I also have Nao123 and Babalyon on my computer but mine came drom downloading VLC from softronics.com., but unlike Foregetit i did not choose custom install . I no lomger have Bayalyon it seems, but i also have tried all the suggestions to no avail to get rid of Hao123.. Malabytes does not pick it up and i tried some other site from a previous post on TV from last year on Hao123 which scanned my computer but failed to pick it up but demanded $64 USD to clean my computer.

The biggest problem with with Hao123 is that it gives direct links to programes that i don't think my kids should be wasting their time on when they should be doing their homework or research on the computer. Yes i know that is contradictory to what most Thai kids get encouraged to use computers for but homework comes first before timewasters like facebook . Hao123 gets a commission everytime somebody uses their link to go to facebook or msn or whatever .

So Rics21 , if you are accusing me of visiting thai porn sites ,your accusations are incorrect .

[bendejo]

...

mine came drom downloading VLC from softronics.com

...

Thanks for posting this, it confirms my suspicions. I recall attempting to dl something from there and the process seemed suspicious, so I aborted, and have been avoiding the site since.

[Gary A]

I tried the ADW Cleaner and by the time I deleted everything it found, Google Chrome wouldn't work and I couldn't even connect to the Internet I had to roll back and restore my computer and had to reinstall Chrome.

I tried Spybot Search and Destroy and it found Babylon but wouldn't delete it even when I allowed it to reboot and run again in the safe mode. After trying quite a few programs which all failed, including Revo Uninstaller. I finally found TDSS Killer from Kaspersky and I think it finally got rid of it. I went so far as to install Firefox again and it appears clean.

I complained to BitDefender and they said that they don't consider Babylon a threat.

[Gary A]

...

mine came drom downloading VLC from softronics.com

...

Thanks for posting this, it confirms my suspicions. I recall attempting to dl something from there and the process seemed suspicious, so I aborted, and have been avoiding the site since.

My infection also came from a download site for Android. Before the download, it gave me the option of installing Babylon and two other hijackers or choosing the custom options and unchecking the three pain in the ass malware programs. I removed the checks, and guess what? All three installed anyways. It especially irritated me because before I hit the download, the site asked me if I was sure that I didn't want to download these free applications.

[bartender100]

I tried the ADW Cleaner and by the time I deleted everything it found, Google Chrome wouldn't work and I couldn't even connect to the Internet I had to roll back and restore my computer and had to reinstall Chrome.

I tried Spybot Search and Destroy and it found Babylon but wouldn't delete it even when I allowed it to reboot and run again in the safe mode. After trying quite a few programs which all failed, including Revo Uninstaller. I finally found TDSS Killer from Kaspersky and I think it finally got rid of it. I went so far as to install Firefox again and it appears clean.

I complained to BitDefender and they said that they don't consider Babylon a threat.

It sounds like you manually deleted everything, I just run it and got rid of a ton of stuff related to Babylon, Ask and other crap searches that take over. Took seconds then a reboot

Thanks for posting that NHJ, I was thinking of a re-install to get rid of them

[ITGabs]

it's kinda annoying how all the freeapps contain toolbars, browsers, or security stuff.

Softonic cnet and all this big branch of software directories are 100% including another stuff.

Ccleaner for example includes Chrome and I hate that.

All the time you must choose advanced install and read what are you installing, ask, aol, babylon toolbar, Chrome, mcfee are very popular annoying addons.

Babylon looks persistent but really is not, you only need to go to control panel and uninstall it and make sure that you don't install it again.

check the startup page and how the new tabs open in configuration of IE and FF, in firefox you can go easy with about:config search babylon and reset/restore the configuration of all the matches with babylon. the same for other startup pages.

Spybot search and destroy have many tools to restore the configurations of many things too.

An advanced solution is get Revo Uninstall Pro so when you want to install a new software you must right click on the installer, and choose install with revo uninstaller, it will open an up bar with a record button, so you install the software normally, open it and close it, and after that stop the record button in the up bar, so the revo uninstall track all the modifications in the entire file system.

Works great, inclusive you can use trial versions more than one time using this soft, since when you remove trial aplications with revo will remove all the remaining keys or locks that are stored in your computer let it completely clean.

[bendejo]

Things like this emphasize why you should do backups regularly.

I had a Win7 break-in the other day, I suspect it was via sidebar. It hosed my system. I restored with a 10-day old backup, I lost a few things I should have salvaged from the Desktop and some updates, but no real bother otherwise. If not for the bu it would have been a Major Issue.

[cup-O-coffee]

A bit late on this, but better late than never. I used this method and it worked a treat.

Orior, I had downloaded a torrent file and installed it and had mistakenly gotten the Babylon and Hao123 and Reg Cleanerr installed.

Solution: Revo Uninstaller Pro.

Another thing, is if you have already tried to uninstall bits and pieces, then re-install the pesky applications so they show up in the Revo Uninstaller and then do an advanced uninstall. If a popup asks you to restart the PC, click no and proceed with Revo.

All the other posts about taking the long way around are overkill. The comment about Firefox allowing these things to happen are what I like about Firefox. It still lets the user decide, unlike IE which acts like a parent and (screw you Microsoft) tells you what you need.

[Jurgita]

Hi,

looks like Hao123 is back again. I had it on my PC a couple of days ago and a simple uninstall from Control Panel did not do the trick I tried ADW Cleaner (it was mentioned in the posts above) and looks like it all worked well. Thanks, guys!

Thought this link will help others as I also needed to reset my home page and default search engine and here is all written in one place for IE, Firefox and Chrome: manual Hao123 removal instructions.