Floating Player Malware

Browser Hijacker
by Brandon Skies
January 14, 2023

Floating Player

Floating Player is a page-redirecting browser hijacker app that takes over the browser and installs various unwanted components in it. If you have Floating Player, you will likely see there’s a new search engine in your browser and that the homepage has been changed.

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The Floating Player Malware

As we mentioned, the goal of the Floating Player virus is to generate advertising revenue. The Floating Player virus promotes certain sites in order to boost their traffic, it shows pay-per-click ads that translate each click on them into money, and they collect data from the browser that can be used for targeted advertising or sold to other advertisers for extra income.

However, none of this can be controlled by the user which means that you have absolutely no way of limiting the advertising exposure or choosing what sites you get redirected to or what ads you see. You are also not allowed to stop the advertising activities if the hijacker is still operational. Unfortunately, this may lead to potential redirects to sketchy sites with malicious contents, and you may get tricked to give away your banking details or to waste your money on low-quality software, not to mention that you may land actual malware if you are that unlucky. Therefore, the best thing you can do now is uninstall Floating Player.

SUMMARY:

NameFloating Player
Type Browser Hijacker
Detection Tool

If you have a Windows virus, continue with the guide below.

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

Please follow all the steps below in order to remove Floating Player!

How to remove Floating Player

  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 Floating Player in the programs list that would show up.
  3. Select Floating Player from the list and click on Uninstall.
  4. Follow the steps in the removal wizard.

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 Floating Player.
  • If you find any of the programs suspicious then uninstall them if they turn out to be linked to Floating Player.
  • 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 Floating Player 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 Floating Player 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 Floating Player 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 Floating Player 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 Floating Player extension
  4. Get rid of Floating Player 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 “Floating Player” or another unwanted app, change it to an address that you’d want to be the browser’s new-tab page.

How to Delete Floating Player

  1. Open task manager
  2. Look for the Floating Player process
  3. Select it and click on End task
  4. Open the file location to delete Floating Player
  • 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 “Floating Player” 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.
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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 Floating Player

    1. Click on the home button
    2. Search for Startup Apps
    3. Look for Floating Player in there
    4. Uninstall Floating Player from Startup Apps by turning it off
    • Now you need to carefully search for and uninstall any Floating Player-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 Floating Player 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 Floating Player?


    If ads are covering your screen while you are online surfing the Internet and if your browser is frequently landing you on pages that you didn’t intend to open, then you might have what is known as a browser hijacker within your main browser. Other typical symptoms related to this form of software are the change of the front page address and the replacement of the search engine tool that the browser uses by default to conduct your online searches. All these page-redirects, browser changes, and ads are coming from the same thing which is a software component that can get installed inside Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Edge, or any other browser that you may be using. This type of software elements are called browser hijackers due to their ability to take over the affected browser and mess with its settings in various ways. Some users and researchers even refer to this type of apps as viruses but the truth is that there are certain differences that sets apart applications like Floating Player or Captcha Fair Top and other more serious threats such as Trojans, Ransomware cryptoviruses, or other highly dangerous forms of computer malware. While the hijacker is mostly programmed to make money through advertising, an actual virus or another form of malware would try to steal sensitive data, corrupt your files, damage the system, or, in the case of Ransomware, encrypt your personal files and force you to pay a ransom to release them. In contrast to all that, a hijacker is incapable of carrying out any of these malicious tasks. However, despite that, apps like Floating Player still have to be removed from any computer where they may have been installed because they could still make the system less safe if allowed to stay in it for long


    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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