Wishenger Virus

Wishenger

If Wishenger has infected your Chrome, Firefox, Edge or other browser, you have yourself a browser hijacker infection on your hands. Wishenger acts as an online advertising tool, and it uses your browser as a platform for its advertising activities.

The Wishenger Virus will display pop up messages which should be ignored.

This is why you are likely to see a rather dramatic increase in the quantity of popups, banners, box messages and other types of ads you see during your browsing sessions. Software like Wishenger tends to install ad-generating components in the infected browsers. And on top of that they also heavily meddle with other browser settings, such as those pertaining to your homepage and the default search engine. What’s more, a browser hijacker like this can even install extra components such as buttons, toolbars and browser add-ons.

But as far as the advertising activities go, let’s also not forget the obligatory page redirects which you will have to get used to if you plan on keeping Wishenger in your system for much longer. If not, however, then you will need a removal guide like the one we have prepared below in order to remove this hijacker from your PC. The reason for this is that traditionally browser hijackers and similar programs do not come with a designated uninstallation button. This is so that users aren’t given an easy way out and the hijackers can squeeze out as much profit from their presence on your computer as possible.

The Wishenger Virus

Software like the Wishenger Virus is very often also involved in activities that are far less apparent to the end-user. Such are the data-collection practices that often include tracking your browsing history, recording searches, taking note of the content you like and share on social media, etc. All of this information is stored and analyzed in order to tailor the stream of ads to each individual user.

In addition, all of these processes call on a substantial amount of RAM and CPU. Hence, they may result in a compromised overall system performance, browser freezes and crashes, lags, etc. But not least of all is the fact that browser hijackers like Wishenger run the risk of exposing your system to various threats such as Trojan horse viruses, ransomware, worms, spyware and who knows what else.

This most probably will not happen intentionally, but you may at some point be redirected to some web location that isn’t safe or that has been injected with viruses and malware. Therefore, to avoid this, we recommend not interacting with any of the numerous popups and banners displayed on your screen. And more importantly, it’s best if you just delete the software that generates them so that you decrease the risk of any malware attacks.

And if you are to keep your system safe from other future browser hijacker infections, make sure to always customize the setup of any new software that you install, especially free system optimization tools and similar programs.

SUMMARY:

Wishenger Virus Removal

To try and remove Wishenger quickly you can try this:

1. Go to your browser’s settings and select More Tools (or Add-ons, depending on your browser).
2. Then click on the Extensions tab.
3. Look for the Wishenger extension (as well as any other unfamiliar ones).
4. Remove Wishenger by clicking on the Thrash Bin icon next to its name.
5. Confirm and get rid of Wishenger and any other suspicious items.

If this does not work as described please follow our more detailed Wishenger removal guide below.

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

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!

We get asked this a lot, so we are putting it here: Removing a malware manually may take hours and damage your system in the process. We recommend downloading SpyHunter to see if it can detect the malware for you.

 *Read more details in the first ad on this page, EULA, Privacy Policy, and full terms for Free Remover.

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:

Each file will be scanned with up to 64 antivirus programs to ensure maximum accuracy

This scanner is free and will always remain free for our website's users.

This file is not matched with any known malware in the database. You can either do a full real-time scan of the file or skip it to upload a new file. Doing a full scan with 64 antivirus programs can take up to 3-4 minutes per file.

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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 Wishenger 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 Wishenger from Firefox:

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

Remove Wishenger 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 doesn’t help, download the anti-virus program we recommended or try our free online virus scanner. Also, you can always ask us in the comments for help!