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Manual Removal Guide for Win32.StartPage

Friday

New member
The following instructions have been created to help you to get rid of "Win32.StartPage" manually.
Use this guide at your own risk; software should usually be better suited to remove malware, since it is able to look deeper.

If this guide was helpful to you, please consider donating towards this site.

Threat Details:

Categories:
  • malware
Description:
Win32.StartPage drops a file to the Appdata folder and creates an autorun entry for it. Once run it changes registry settings and the start pages of the Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox.​
Removal Instructions:

Autorun:

Please use Spybot-S&D, RunAlyzer or msconfig.exe to remove the following autorun entries.
  • Entries named "Start Page" and pointing to "?<$APPDATA>\*.exe?".
  • Entries named "Start Page" and pointing to "?<$APPDATA>\web2net.exe?".
  • Entries named "Windows Login access" and pointing to "<$APPDATA>\*.exe".
  • Entries named "Windows Login access" and pointing to "<$APPDATA>\web2net.exe".
Files:

Important: There are more files that cannot be safely described in simple words. Please use Spybot-S&D to remove them.

Registry:

You can use regedit.exe (included in Windows) to locate and delete these registry entries.
  • Delete the registry value "<$APPDATA>\web2net.exe" at "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers\".
  • Delete the registry value "<$APPDATA>\web2net.exe" at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\AppCompatFlags\Layers\".
  • Remove "http://www.premierarticles.info" from registry value "Start Page" at "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\".
  • Remove "http://zonedirector.com*" from registry value "Start Page" at "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\".
If Win32.StartPage uses rootkit technologies, use our RegAlyzer, RootAlyzer or our Total Commander anti-rootkit plugins.

Browser:

The following browser plugins or items can either be removed directly in your browser, or through the help of e.g. Spybot-S&D or RunAlyzer.
  • Please check your bookmarks for links to "http://www.premierarticles.info".
  • Please check your bookmarks for links to "http://zonedirector.com*".
Final Words:

If neither Spybot-S&D nor self help did resolve the issue or you would prefer one on one help,
  1. Please read these instructions before requesting assistance,
  2. Then start your own thread in the Malware Removal Forum where a volunteer analyst will advise you as soon as available.
 
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