Festival Marquee Company Virus

Browser Hijacker
by Brandon Skies
May 28, 2023

Festival Marquee Company

Festival Marquee Company is a form of browser-redirecting software created for the purposes of online site-promotion and targeted ad-generation. Festival Marquee Company attaches itself to the main browser on the computer and manipulates its settings, causing uncontrolled generation of advertisements, page-redirects, banners, clickbait links, and more.

The Festival Marquee Company virus constant redirects and ads as intrusive and annoying.
Screenshot of the Festival Marquee Company virus pop up

One of the most annoying types of software today, which many web users seek to uninstall, are the so-called browser hijackers. Their appearance is usually associated with a lot of ads, banners, pop-ups, automatic page-redirects and some changes to the main browser which take place without the users’ direct approval. Other obvious signs of the presence of such software on your system could be the replacement of your main search engine or the homepage with a new and unknown ones, as well as the appearance of new toolbars, buttons, and shortcuts that directly link to specific third-party platforms and sites. It doesn’t matter which browser you use, since practically any of the popular ones may get hijacked by this software, be it Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Explorer, Opera or another. Unfortunately, you may not be able to remove the imposed changes in any way while the browser hijacker remains operational, which you can quickly see for yourself the moment you try to deal with any of the ads or the related components.

In this article, we will discuss a specific representative of the browser hijacker family called Festival Marquee Company . This app is a new addition to this category and it has the ability to promote different products, services, platforms and websites during your regular web browsing sessions and in order to achieve that, it typically gets integrated with your main browser. If you have landed on this page because “ads generated by FestivalMarqueeCompany have started to spam your screen and you have started to experience automatic redirects to various sponsored sites, below we will tell you everything you need to know about this application, as well as show you the methods you can use to uninstall it. Moreover, we will also provide you with a very detailed removal guide with screenshots, with the help of which you will be able to find and remove all files and components related to Festival Marquee Company , including the new homepage domain or the search engine that might have been imposed on your browser.

The Vipsupport.festivalmarqueecompany.cyou Virus

The Vipsupport.festivalmarqueecompany.cyou virus, in general, is not considered to be virus or representative of malware categories such as Ransomware, Trojans, or Spyware and it not accurate to refer to them as malware. The sole purpose of the Vipsupport.festivalmarqueecompany.cyou virus is to promote and aggressively advertise various kinds of goods, services, websites, etc. on the users’ screens during their regular web surfing.

SUMMARY:

NameFestival Marquee Company
Type Browser Hijacker
Danger LevelMedium (nowhere near threats like Ransomware, but still a security risk)
Symptoms Intrusive ads, frequent pop-up interruptions and automatic page-redirects are typical symptoms of this program.
Distribution MethodSoftware bundles, free installers, torrents, spam messages, ads, automatic updates and freeware sites. 
Detection Tool

Please follow all the steps below in order to remove Festival Marquee Company!

How to remove Festival Marquee Company

  1. First, click the Start Menu on your Windows PC.
  2. Type Programs and Settings in the Start Menu, click the first item, and find Festival Marquee Company in the programs list that would show up.
  3. Select Festival Marquee Company from the list and click on Uninstall.
  4. Follow the steps in the removal wizard.

If you have a Mac virus, please use our How to remove Ads on Mac guide.

If you have an Android virus, please use our Android Malware Removal guide.

If you have an iPhone virus, please use our iPhone Virus Removal guide.

What we suggest you do first is, check the list of programs that are presently installed on the infected device and uninstall any rogue software that you find there:

  • From the Start Menu, navigate to Control Panel ->>> Programs and Features ->>> Uninstall a Program.
  • Next, carefully search for unfamiliar programs or programs that have been installed recently and could be related to Festival Marquee Company.
  • If you find any of the programs suspicious then uninstall them if they turn out to be linked to Festival Marquee Company.
  • If a notification appears on your screen when you try to uninstall a specific questionable program prompting you to just alter it or repair it, make sure you choose NO and complete the steps from the removal wizard.

Remove Festival Marquee Company from Chrome

  1. Click on the three dots in the right upper corner
  2. Go to more tools
  3. Now select extensions
  4. Remove the Festival Marquee Company extension
  • Once you open Chrome, click on the three-dots icon to open the browser’s menu, go to More Tools/ More Options, and then to Extensions.
  • Again, find the items on that page that could be linked to the malware and/or that might be causing problems in the browser and delete them.
  • Afterwards, go to this folder: Computer > C: > Users > *Your User Account* > App Data > Local > Google > Chrome > User Data. In there, you will find a folder named Default – you should change its name to Backup Default and restart the PC.
  • Note that the App Data folder is normally hidden so you’d have to first make the hidden files and folders on your PC visible before you can access it.

How to get rid of Festival Marquee Company on FF/Edge/etc.

  1. Open the browser and select the menu icon.
  2. From the menu, click on the Add-ons button.
  3. Look for the Festival Marquee Company extension
  4. Get rid of Festival Marquee Company by removing it from extensions

If using Firefox:

  • Open Firefox
  • Select the three parallel lines menu and go to Add-ons.
  • Find the unwanted add-on and delete it from the browser – if there is more than one unwanted extension, remove all of them.
  • Go to the browser menu again, select Options, and then click on Home from the sidebar to the left.
  • Check the current addresses for the browser’s homepage and new-tab page and change them if they are currently set to address(es) you don’t know or trust.

If using MS Edge/IE:

  • Start Edge
  • Select the browser menu and go to Extensions.
  • Find and uninstall any Edge extensions that look undesirable and unwanted.
  • Select Settings from the browser menu and click on Appearance.
  • Check the new-tab page address of the browser and if it has been modified by the malicious program or another unwanted app, change it to an address that you’d want to be the browser’s new-tab page.

How to Delete Festival Marquee Company

  1. Open task manager
  2. Look for the Festival Marquee Company process
  3. Select it and click on End task
  4. Open the file location to delete Festival Marquee Company
  • Access the Task Manager by pressing together the Ctrl + Alt + Del keys and then selecting Task Manager.
  • Open Processes and there try to find a process with the name of the unwanted software. If you find it, select it with the right button of the mouse and click on the Open File Location option.
  • If you don’t see a malicious process in the Task Manager, look for another suspicious process with an unusual name. It is likely that the unwanted process would be using lots of RAM and CPU so pay attention to the number of resources each process is using.
  • Tip: If you think you have singled out the unwanted process but are not sure, it’s always a good idea to search for information about it on the Internet – this should give you a general idea if the process is a legitimate one from a regular program or from your OS or if it is indeed likely linked to the adware.
  • If you find another suspicious process, open its File Location too.
  • Once in the File Location folder for the suspicious process, start testing all of the files that are stored there by dragging them to our free online scanner available below.
  • Each file will be scanned with up to 64 antivirus programs to ensure maximum accuracy
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    • If the scanner finds malware in any of the files, return to the Processes tab in the Task Manager, select the suspected process, and then select the End Process option to quit it.
    • Go back to the folder where the files of that process are located and delete all of the files that you are allowed to delete. If all files get deleted normally, exit the folder and delete that folder too. If one or more of the files showed an error message when you tried to delete them, leave them for now and return to try to delete them again once you’ve completed the rest of the guide.

    How to Uninstall Festival Marquee Company

    1. Click on the home button
    2. Search for Startup Apps
    3. Look for Festival Marquee Company in there
    4. Uninstall Festival Marquee Company from Startup Apps by turning it off
    • Now you need to carefully search for and uninstall any Festival Marquee Company-related entries from the Registry. The easiest way to do this is to open the Registry Editor app (type Regedit in the windows search field and press Enter) and then open a Find dialog (CTRL+F key combination) where you have to type the name of the threat. 
    • Perform a search by clicking on the Find Next button and delete any detected results. Do this as many times as needed until no more results are found. 
    • After that, to ensure that there are no remaining entries lined to Festival Marquee Company in the Registry, go manually to the following directories and delete them:
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Random Directory. 
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run/Random
    • HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/Main/Random

    What is Festival Marquee Company?

    Festival Marquee Company is a browser hijacker/adware virus. It is clear that this is beneficial for the manufacturers or distributors of the advertised items and services, but the developers of browser hijackers and other similar software also benefit from this. In fact, the former group pays the latter for including their adverts in the on-screen streaming of the hijacker and for redirecting the users to their sites by making them click on certain links and pop-ups. This happens according to a well-known remuneration system, called Pay Per Click, which is actually the basis for so many businesses. From a legal point of view, the hijackers aren’t forbidden per se – applications like Festival Marquee Company and BestSearch.ai operate as advertising tools and are not interested in harming the computer in the way that real viruses, Trojans or Ransomware infections are. The problem with such apps, however, lies in the fact that many security experts and even the users themselves find the constant redirects and ads as intrusive and annoying. Moreover, it is not known how reliable these ads are. That’s why, if you also have concerns, feel free to use the instructions below and get rid of the hijacker once and for all.


    About the author

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    Brandon Skies

    Brandon is a researcher and content creator in the fields of cyber-security and virtual privacy. Years of experience enable him to provide readers with important information and adequate solutions for the latest software and malware problems.

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