Crawler.com virus - How to remove

Crawler.com virus is a browser hijacker that can be installed to Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome browsers without users’ knowledge. The purpose of the program is to advertise various websites and gain money from clicks on affiliate links. It doesn’t harm your computer directly, but because of the ways it uses to infiltrate into systems, it is considered to be a potentially unwanted program.

Crawler.com virus is installed to random browsers bundled to free programs from the Internet. You can find it on your browser after getting a free music player, PDF creator and other similar applications. In order to avoid installing additional unwanted programs, you should pay more attention to the installation steps of applications that you are downloading from the Internet. Usually you can see at one of the installation steps if any extra tools are being tried to be installed.

Once inside, Crawler.com virus changes your default search provider and homepage to www2.crawler.com. Although it looks like any other search engine, it includes tons of sponsored websites to your search results and may also cause redirections. It is very annoying to be interrupted all the time. Besides your system can be infected if Crawler.com virus redirects you to some compromised website.

If you noticed these changes in any of your browsers, remove Crawler.com virus as soon as possible. At first, uninstall it from Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs list. It is recommended to get rid of ALL programs installed on the same date as problems have appeared. Some versions of this virus add software that blocks browser settings from changing. To identify them, scanning with Spyhunter or other reputable antispyware tool might be useful. Then you can uninstall the extensions and reset settings in your browsers.

How to remove Crawler virus  from Internet Explorer (older versions):

1. Click on the arrow on the right of the search box;
2. Do the following: on IE8-9 choose Manage Search providers, on IE7 click on Change search defaults;
3. Remove Crawler.com from the list.

How to remove Crawler virus from IE 11:

1. Click on the Settings icon (top right)->Manage Addons;
2. Select Search Providers;
3. Change the default search engine to Bing or Google;
4. If any of these search providers is not available, follow “Find more search providers” in the bottom of the screen and install Google.

How to remove Crawler virus from Firefox:

1. Enter “about:config” in url bar. This will open settings page;
2. Type “Keyword.url” in the search box. Right click and reset it;
3. Type “browser.search.defaultengine” in the search box. Right click it and reset it;
4. Type “browser.search.selectedengine” in the search box. Right click it and reset it;
5. Type “browser.startup.homepage” in the search box. Right click it and reset;
6. Search for “browser.newtab.url”. Right-click and reset. This will make sure that the search page won’t launch on every new tab;
7. If the settings revert and scan with anti-malware programs are clean: close Firefox, open file explorer and enter %AppData% in the address bar. Enter user.js in the search box. If this file exists, rename it and start Firefox again. You will have to repeat the steps above.

How to remove Crawler virus from Google Chrome:

1. Click on the 3 horizontal lines icon on the browser toolbar;
2. Select Settings;
3. Select Basics ->Manage Search engines;
4. Remove unnecessary search engines from the list;
5. Go back to Settings. On Startup choose ‘Open blank page’ (you can remove undesired pages from the set pages link too);
6. If your New Tab page is hijacked, you will have to scan with anti-malware program or use New Tab Redirect extension from Chrome Store.

Remove shortcut hijack (all browsers) (optional):

If your browser opens a Crawler.com page on startup only, try this:

1. Right click on your browser icon. Choose Properties;
2. Open a Short cut tab;
3. Delete Crawler.com part from a target field.

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