GEUNFY “Virus” Removal

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In this article we are going to try and help you remove GEUNFY “Virus”. Our instructions cover all Windows versions as well as most browsers – Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer etc.

Is GEUNFY “Virus” causing an issue with your Chrome or Firefox browser, where numerous ads, pop up, and banners appear out of nowhere and keep disturbing you? Do you wish to stop them permanently? If this is your case, here you will find information about the source of the annoying ads and a very detailed guide, which will help you completely remove them. To be precise, you will be dealing with an adware type of software and in case your ads contain small text like “Powered by GEUNFY” or “Ads generated by GEUNFY”, then GEUNFY would be the most probable adware application you may need to uninstall. In the next lines, we will shed a bit more light on this program’s typical behavior, as well as some of the best tips on how to prevent installing such adware-like software in the future.

Adware’s typical features:

Is GEUNFY a “Virus” ? No, it is not a virus.It is an Adware. All applications that fall under the adware category usually have typical features and similar effects on your system. You would easily recognize that such programs operate on your PC when every time you open your browser, you get dozens of ads, pop-ups, banners, blinking notifications and links that aggressively appear on your screen. They may be so intrusive that they become impossible to close, or every time you close them, dozens more appear and interrupt your normal browsing activity.

GEUNFY is one such adware application and its ads-generating component successfully integrates with all browsers and immediately starts to flood you with numerous ads. What is more, it may even synchronize the displayed advertisements with your last web searches and online activities. For example, if you search for new sunglasses, you may notice that shortly after that, most of the ads that GEUNFY displays would be related to sunglasses sales, hot offers, promotions and best brands. This activity is known as traffic data collection and adware applications like this one often track down the user’s web behavior in order to make the users click on ads, based on their interests. In fact, the clicks are the most important thing here, because they generate profits for the adware developers through a method known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC). A Huge amount of ads is displayed on the screen just with the idea to collect as many clicks as possible. However, users that are exposed to that activity may experience undesired disturbance that may prevent them from browsing the web normally; therefore, many of them may wish to remove the adware from their system.

A possible negative consequence of the adware activity…

When lots of randomly generated content such as ads, pop-ups, banners, blinking boxes, new tabs and links appear on your screen, you never know how safe they are. Sometimes, when you happen to click on such ads, you may land on an insecure web page, compromised content or even misleading links that may infect you with all sorts of nasty malware like Trojans, Spyware, Ransomware and other viruses. Nowadays malicious hackers use a method called malvertising, which is used to infect unsuspecting users through seemingly harmless ads, too-good-to-be-true offers and misleading web pages. And while adware programs like GEUNFY are not directly related to that malicious method, they may indirectly expose you to such risks, having in mind the huge amount of ads they display. Therefore, our team advises its users to avoid clicking on such ads as much as possible, or directly uninstall the adware to eliminate the chance of clicking on them unknowingly.

How can adware get installed on your system?

Unlike viruses, which sneak inside the system unknowingly and harm your computer in various ways, adware like GEUNFY, in fact, needs your permission to get installed. And while viruses and malware threats like Ransomware use backdoors and system vulnerabilities to get inside your PC, adware comes in a software bundle, usually with some free program you willingly download from the web. These main differences generally distinguish adware from malware; moreover, adware has no harmful capabilities. However, such software could still be classified as potentially unwanted due to the rather intrusive activity and the way it tricks people into installing it. Packed inside a software bundle with another desirable program, GEUNFY usually gets installed automatically when the users run the setup without checking the advanced/custom option. This is a common mistake that leads to the installation of various types of potentially unwanted software.

The standard installation usually doesn’t give many details about the additional software in the bundle, therefore, we strongly advise users to always manually check the custom option in the setup to prevent adware from getting installed automatically. Spam emails, free software downloads, download managers, torrent and open source platforms are the most common places where such software bundles are distributed. So, if you usually get your software from such places, you should always opt for the advanced/custom settings when installing the new program. The chance is you have probably skipped that option the last time, so now we suggest you proceed to the guide below to completely remove GEUNFY from your computer.

GEUNFY “Virus” Removal

Many types of malware will restrict your access to their core files. It is highly recommended that you reboot your PC in safe mode before attempting to use this guide.

  • To enable Safe Mode reboot you PC, then hit F8 repeatedly. When the corresponding menu opens please select Safe Mode with Networking.

WARNING! If you are using Windows 8,0 or later and/or your operating system is installed on a fast SSD drive this may fail to work. In this case click here to see how to start your PC in Safe Mode.

#1: Uninstall the malicious program from your control panel

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Enter control panel to look for any suspicious programs, which may have installed on your PC. To do that:

  1. Navigate to your Desktop
  2. Press simultaneously the Win button together with the R button (Win+R)
  3. In the Run window that just opened type appwiz.cpl

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  1. Go through the list of programs and find GEUNFY or anything else that may seem suspicious. Right-click on it and choose the uninstallation option

WARNING! Carefully read any confirmation messages that may be created in the process. Sometimes you may get offers to download more Adware applications and this can be linked to either the Yes or the No answer depending on the wording!

  • Optional:

Go through the list of programs again and check online for any potentially unwanted programs. We have an article that covers this awesome free software that makes sure that your computer is free from bloatware and programs that you don’t need.

#2: Remove GEUNFY From Chrome

Now we’ll remove the extensions that the malware has attached to your browser.

  1. Open your Google Chrome browser.
  2. Type chrome://extensions/  in the URL address bar and press Enter.
  3. Click on “Developer Mode” on the top right and look for the extension installed by GEUNFY and anything that might be related to it. Copy their IDs (the string of letters), then remove them by clicking on the trash bin icon.

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  1. Type Regedit in the Windows Start Menu and press Enter. Go in : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Google\Chrome\Extensions and delete the entries corresponding to the suspicious IDs you recorded.

#3: Remove GEUNFY From Firefox

  1. Open Mozilla Firefox browser.
  2. Type “about:support” in the URL address bar and press Enter.
  3. Click on the “Refresh Firefox” button on the right and confirm.

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#4 Remove GEUNFY From Internet Explorer

  1. Open your Internet Explorer internet browser.
  2. Click on the Gear icon on the up right, then on manage add-ons.
  3. Go through the list disable any suspicious extensions.

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#5 Remove any leftover parasitic processes

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From the task manager:

  1. Use Ctrl + Shift + Esc and open the Task manager, then click on the Processes
  2. Go through the list of processes and look for unknown or otherwise suspicious entries.
  3. If you see anything suspicious right click on the process and shoes Open File Location, then terminate the process and delete any files you find in the directory.

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WARNING! If the directory you open from this menu has no files inside of it it’s probably because the malware has hidden them. You need to reveal hidden files and folders in order to be able to see them. Click here if you don’t know how to do that.


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From the start menu:

  1. Press simultaneously the Win button together with the R button (Win+R)
  2. In the Run window that just opened type msconfig
  3. Click on the Startup tab.

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This menu controls which programs are loaded when windows starts after a reboot. Disable anything that seems suspicious. Optionally you can also disable any program that you don’t need and also has a high impact on your startup time.

Feel free to write to us in the comment section with any questions that you may have. Also if we have been helpful to you please share this article to help us reach more people like you.  

 

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