Win Snare “Virus” Removal

This page aims to help you remove Win Snare “Virus”. These Win Snare “Virus” removal instructions work for Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer, as well as every version of Windows.

If you are reading this page, you are most probably facing some strange activity on your screen. Numerous ads, pop-ups, banners and new tabs are probably disturbing your normal browsing and the reason for that is an adware program called Win Snare “Virus”, which has recently invaded your Chrome or Firefox browser. The chance is that you may feel some irritation and disturbance, caused by the intrusive way this potentially unwanted program interrupts you. That’s why here we have dedicated a whole article on how to effectively remove this adware and all of its annoying messages. In the next lines we will explain how exactly Win Snare operates, whether there any security risks related to it and how to uninstall all of its components from your machine using the removal guide below.

What is Win Snare?

Win Snare is an adware program that operates by making some undesired changes in the user’s browser and displaying tons of sponsored advertisements, pop-ups, banners, and pages no their screen. Once it gets installed on your machine, this program may easily replace your homepage with another one, which has been promoted by the adware partners. Your default search engine may also be substituted by another one, which may redirect most of your searches to different ads, promotions, and online offers. All this is done to ensure that you are seeing more advertisements and eventually click on them because every click you make generates revenue for the Win Snare developers. This is possible through the famous Pay-Per-Click model, which many businesses and software developers now widely use to make profit out of paid sponsored ads. Despite this method being legal, the behavior of adware is mostly referred to by the affected users as potentially unwanted, and they often seek for ways to remove it from their computers in order to restore their normal browser settings.

Is Win Snare “virus” really a virus?

Those of you not really familiar with how exactly adware works may easily mistake it for a virus or some kind of malicious infection. The way these programs impose their changes and flood your screen with ads may really be an unpleasant experience. However, the good news is that adware is not malicious. Yes, indeed there are many malicious threats out there such as Trojans, Spyware, Ransomware and different viruses, but adware is not one of them. This software is specialized in displaying nagging ads, redirecting your searches and showing you all sorts of promotional web pages, which may not really be relevant or useful in any particular way, but certainly, cannot do harm to your machine the way a nasty Ransomware infection could. Preventing access to your data, spying on you, file encryption and system infiltration are just some of the malicious activities you should be concerned about, when it comes to malware of this type but none of them are related to ad-generating programs like Win Snare.

However, adware can still be a source of annoyance, especially when it constantly exposes you to unknown web pages, aggressively popping boxes and notifications. In such cases, you can never be sure whether the pages you get redirected to are safe, legal or compromised. Closing them may also be a hard task because clicking on one may automatically bring a series of new tabs and ads on your screen. That’s why the best is to simply avoid clicking on them if you want to avoid some well-masked malicious infections that may eventually be lurking inside the ads you are exposed to. Or better yet, simply remove the source of all of them.

How to keep adware away?

This type of software is distributed on various online platforms, file sharing sites, torrent sites, online installers and via spam emails. If you install free software on your computer mostly from such places, you are more likely to come across adware and different potentially unwanted components, which are often found in software bundles. They may silently get installed without notice the moment you run the bundle of the desired program “as is”. Not reading the EULA and not checking the advanced or custom options in the setup may cost you the disturbance of a program like Win Snare later. That’s why to keep such potentially unwanted software away we advise you to always select the most detailed installation options and carefully read the full list of programs within the given bundle you are about to install. This may save you a lot of headache dealing with potentially unwanted software in the future.

SUMMARY:

Name	Win Snare
Type	Adware
Danger Level	Medium (nowhere near threats like Ransomware, but still a security risk)
Symptoms	Changes in your homepage and search engine, page redirects, intrusive ads, pop-ups and banners on your screen.
Distribution Method	Usually found in software bundles, installation managers, free software download platforms, torrents, spam emails.
Detection Tool	We generally recommend SpyHunter or a similar anti-malware program that is updated daily.

Keep in mind, SpyHunter’s malware detection tool is free. To remove the infection, you’ll need to purchase the full version.
More information about SpyHunter and steps to uninstall.

 

Win Snare “Virus” Removal

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Some of the steps will likely require you to exit the page. Bookmark it for later reference.

Reboot in Safe Mode (use this guide if you don’t know how to do it).

WARNING! READ CAREFULLY BEFORE PROCEEDING!

Press CTRL + SHIFT + ESC at the same time and go to the Processes Tab (the “Details” Tab on Win 8 and 10). Try to determine which processes are dangerous. 

Right click on each of them and select Open File Location. Then scan the files with our free online virus scanner:

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After you open their folder, end the processes that are infected, then delete their folders. 

Note: If you are sure something is part of the infection – delete it, even if the scanner doesn’t flag it. No anti-virus program can detect all infections. 

Hold together the Start Key and R. Type appwiz.cpl –> OK.

You are now in the Control Panel. Look for suspicious entries. Uninstall it/them.

Type msconfig in the search field and hit enter. A window will pop-up:

Startup —> Uncheck entries that have “Unknown” as Manufacturer or otherwise look suspicious.

Hold the Start Key and R –  copy + paste the following and click OK:

notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts

A new file will open. If you are hacked, there will be a bunch of other IPs connected to you at the bottom. Look at the image below:

If there are suspicious IPs below “Localhost” – write to us in the comments.

Open the start menu and search for Network Connections (On Windows 10 you just write it after clicking the Windows button), press enter.

1. Right-click on the Network Adapter you are using —> Properties —> Internet Protocol Version 4 (ICP/IP), click  Properties.
2. The DNS line should be set to Obtain DNS server automatically. If it is not, set it yourself.
3. Click on Advanced —> the DNS tab. Remove everything here (if there is something) —> OK.

• After you complete this step, the threat will be gone from your browsers. Finish the next step as well or it may reappear on a system reboot.

Right click on the browser’s shortcut —> Properties.

NOTE: We are showing Google Chrome, but you can do this for Firefox and IE (or Edge).

Properties —–> Shortcut. In Target, remove everything after .exe.

  Remove Win Snare from Internet Explorer:

Open IE, click   —–> Manage Add-ons.

Find the threat —> Disable. Go to  —–> Internet Options —> change the URL to whatever you use (if hijacked) —> Apply.

 Remove Win Snare from Firefox:

Open Firefox, click    ——-> Add-ons —-> Extensions.

Find the adware/malware —> Remove.
Remove Win Snare from Chrome:

Close Chrome. Navigate to:

 C:/Users/!!!!USER NAME!!!!/AppData/Local/Google/Chrome/User Data. There is a Folder called “Default” inside:

Rename it to Backup Default. Restart Chrome.

Type Regedit in the windows search field and press Enter.

Inside, press CTRL and F together and type the threat’s Name. Right click and delete any entries you find with a similar name. If they don’t show up this way, go manually to these directories and delete/uninstall them:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER—-Software—–Random Directory. It could be any one of them – ask us if you can’t discern which ones are malicious.
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER—-Software—Microsoft—-Windows—CurrentVersion—Run– Random
  HKEY_CURRENT_USER—-Software—Microsoft—Internet Explorer—-Main—- Random

If the guide didn’t help you, download the anti-virus program we recommended or ask us in the comments for guidance!