Total ReCaptcha
Total ReCaptcha is a browser hijacker program that changes the settings of a web browser without the user’s consent. Usually, Total ReCaptcha redirects users to sponsored URLs that they do not intend to visit and exposes them to pay-per-click advertisements.
You’ve most probably realized that Total ReCaptcha has been integrated with your browser (Chrome, Firefox, Edge, etc.) the moment you noticed some of its typical symptoms. Namely, these could involve automatic redirects to unknown web pages, homepage or search engine changes, and an uncontrollable stream of ads, pop-ups, and banners all over your screen. Luckily, we’ve put together a removal guide that will help you to uninstall the undesirable changes and remove the nagging ads. Just follow the instructions and they’ll lead you to successfully removing Total ReCaptcha and all its related components. First, however, we advise you to read through the paragraphs below, as they contain basic but necessary information about such programs.
The TotalReCaptcha Virus
Usually, this is the first thing that comes to mind when a browser hijacker such as the TotalReCaptcha virus on nests itself inside the system, especially when this happens for the first time. The TotalReCaptcha virus, however, is not malicious program and have nothing to do with viruses or infections like Trojans.
Yet, security experts classify them as potentially unwanted applications and advise the users to uninstall them. The main reason is that maintaining such software on your computer is associated with browsing irritation and disturbance, as well as with system sluggishness.
The TotalReCaptcha.top Virus
Programs such as the TotalReCaptcha.top Virus tend to use a lot of the resources of your device to constantly generate ads on your screen. Over time, the TotalReCaptcha.top Virus could lead to a significant decrease in the overall device’s performance.
You may start witnessing browser crashes, excessively long page-loading times and even unresponsiveness from the browser, which can all greatly disturb your web browsing experience.
A major reason to remove an invasive program such as Total Recaptcha as soon as possible is directly related to the ads you see on your screen. Some hackers and cyber criminals may exploit a given ad by embedding Total ReCaptcha with a virus such as ransomware.
This is a very dangerous thing, and advertisements like this are called malvertisements. If you accidentally click on a malvertisement, you may get infected in no time and, sadly, you will probably not have the slightest idea of what has happened until it’s too late. Of course, we have to say that it’s quite rare to land on an ad like that because browser hijackers don’t deliberately spread malvertisements. Yet, it is not excluded that some of the pop-up messages, banners, and commercials that Total ReCaptcha generates on your screen may potentially be compromised. Or, they may turn out to be misleading and redirect you to unfamiliar web locations full of security hazards.
Therefore, one of the best ways to prevent a possible encounter with security hazards is to keep away from potentially malicious ads, random links, and pop-up messages, as those have proved to be quite effective at transmitting viruses of all kinds. Avoiding ads, however, may be quite difficult when a browser hijacker is constantly filling your screen with them. Therefore, uninstalling the ad-generating software is the ultimate solution.
SUMMARY:
| Name | Total ReCaptcha |
| Type | Browser Hijacker |
| Detection Tool |
Remove Total ReCaptcha Virus
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
To remove Total ReCaptcha from the system, first check your browsers for unwelcome extensions added by the hijacker.
- Go to the affected browser, select its menu, and access the Extensions page.
- In it, see if there are any items that may be related to Total ReCaptcha and uninstall them.
- Look for other unneeded or unwanted extensions and remove those too.
- Do the same thing with all other browsers in the system in order to remove Total ReCaptcha.
If you are no longer seeing the symptoms of this hijacker while you are using your browser, then maybe it is gone, in which case there won’t be any need to complete any of the more advanced steps below. However, if the unpleasant software still seems to be there, this means that Total ReCaptcha has probably made other changes in the computer that you must deal with. In this case, go to the following steps and complete them to ensure that nothing from this hijacker is allowed to stay in your system.
Advanced Total ReCaptcha removal steps
Step 1
Bookmark this page to make finding it easier or have it open on your smartphone (or another device). This is because you will need to restart the computer on several occasions during the guide.
Step 2
The most common method that the creators of potentially unwanted software such as Total ReCaptcha use to get their apps distributed to more systems is file-bundling and so it is highly likely that a program you’ve recently installed is what has (unbeknownst to you) introduced the hijacker to your system. For that reason, you must now check what programs you have on the computer and uninstall any potentially undesirable ones.
Go to the Control Panel (Start Menu > Control Panel) and click on the button labelled Uninstall a Program. The list that appears on your screen contains all third-party software installed on your machine. Look for anything that has been installed around the date or just before the Total ReCaptcha hijacker began to bother you. If there is a program installed around that time that looks suspicious, select it, select Uninstall from the top of the window, and follow the on-screen instructions of the uninstaller. If it asks you if you want to keep anything from the program, click on No and make sure that everything gets uninstalled.
Step 3
Now you must open the Task Manager utility – do this by pressing together Ctrl + Shift + Esc. Now select Processes and look through the listed processes. The name of the one launched by the hijacker could have virtually any name, so it’s best to start from the resource-intensive processes – the ones that are using lots of RAM and CPU. If among them you see a process with an unusual name, especially one that is unfamiliar and doesn’t seem related to any program that is open on your PC at the moment, go to Google, Bing, or another reliable search engine and see what information you can find about that process. Also, right-click on the process entry in the Task manager and select the Open File Location option.
Use the scanner we’ve provided below and/or your own anti-malware scanner to test the files in that folder.
If malware is detected in any of them, this means you must quit the process they are related to, so go back to the Task Manager, right-click again on the process, and select End Process.
After you do this, delete the File Location folder where the scanner detected malware. If there’s an error message when you try to delete the folder, try to delete the files that are in it and if you are prohibited from deleting any of them, leave them for now. Later, once you’ve completed the entire guide, come back here and try once more to delete the Location folder of the hijacker process.
Step 4
Boot your computer into Safe Mode – if you don’t know how to do this, click on the link and follow the instructions that you will be taken to.
Step 5
Go to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center. Click on the network that the PC is connected to at the moment, select the Properties button, click on Internet Protocol Version 4, and click on the next Properties button. There, select the Obtain an IP address automatically and open Advanced. In the next window, open the DNS tab, delete any IPs that may be listed there, and click on OK. If no IPs are listed, simply click OK. Select OK on all other open windows as well.
Step 6
Place this: notepad %windir%/system32/Drivers/etc/hosts in the Start Menu and open the item that shows up in the results. This is the Hosts file of your PC – a file often targeted by hijackers and other unwanted software. If your Hosts file has been hijacked by Total ReCaptcha, there would typically be questionable-looking IPs at the bottom of the text, right below the Localhost lines. Copy anything you see there are paste it in the comments section below this guide. After we examine the IPs from your Hosts file, we will tell you if they really are from Total ReCaptcha, and if they are, you will have to delete them and then click on File > Save in the Hosts file to save the changes.
Step 7
Search for System Configuration in the Start Menu and open the icon that shows up. In the System Configuration utility, check the Startup section – if any of the items in it are unknown to you or seem possibly linked to Total ReCaptcha, disable them by removing the ticks from their checkboxes. Click OK to save what changes you’ve made and move on to Step 8.
Step 8
Read before you proceed!: You must only delete items from the Registry while completing the current step if you are absolutely sure they must be deleted. In case of uncertainty, always first ask us in the comments before you go on to delete anything. Otherwise, if you end up deleting something that you shouldn’t, you may cause more problems to your system.
Access the Registry Editor by typing regedit in the Start Menu and opening the regedit.exe program.
Click on Yes when Windows asks for permission and then go to Edit > Find in the Registry Editor. Type Total ReCaptcha in the small search box and click on Find Next to search for related items.
Delete what gets found, do another search, delete the next item, and proceed like this until no more items are getting found.
Next, navigate to these next three locations in the Registry:
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Random Directory.
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Run
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Microsoft/Internet Explorer/Main
In them, look for items with very long names that look like sequences of random symbols. If you see anything like this, delete it. If you are unsure about a certain item or items, remember to consult us through the comments section below.
Step 9
For this final step, you must once again check all of your browsers for hijacker modifications (even if you have completed the browser-cleaning steps at the beginning).
Start by right-clicking on the icon of the browser and opening the Properties window. In it, select the section labelled Shortcut and then click in the Target box and delete everything that’s written there after “.exe”.
Next, open the browser itself, select the menu (the menu button should be in the upper left or upper right corner), and go to Extensions. If you are using Chrome, go to More Tools first and then Extensions from the submenu.
Check once again the browser extensions for any unwanted entries like we told you at the beginning of the guide – anything that seems unwanted you must first Disable and then Uninstall.
Following that, open the browser menu again, go to Settings (Options if you are in Firefox) and then click on the Privacy and Security settings.
There, look for an option labelled Clear/Delete browsing data or something along those lines.
If you are trying to clean Microsoft Edge, the option you should be looking for is Choose what to clear.
In the next window, you should put ticks in each box except Passwords and then select the Clear Now button.
Do not quit the browser until the deletion process is over – it may take a few minutes if this hasn’t been done in a while.
If the problem isn’t solved
Unfortunately, it’s still possible that Total ReCaptcha stays in the system even after you complete this guide. In such cases, the best solution we can offer you is the powerful malware-deletion tool available on this page – it has the ability to quickly and securely dispose of any hijackers or other unwanted software while also keeping your computer protected from future threats.
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