Can't Remove Ask.com search program.

Hopalong X said:

I just thought of something.

Go here to this tutorial. Start at Step #2. Task Manager - Show Services Running under svchost.exe

Open Task Manager. Click the Processes tab. Show all processes as in tutorial.
Then see if it is listed there, Ask or About.
Right click if listed which is Step #3 and click "Open File Location".

I realize it is a long shot but may be listed.
Also you can look at processes with the voice software off then turn it on to see what processes start up.
If there is an odd entry that might be worth checking out.

Everything running should show in processes after clicking "Show Processes From All Users" but if it is hidden within another process???? you may never find it without removing software you need.
Catch-22
For instance if it is embedded in the Adobe voice software you would need a replacement for that unfortunately.

Worth a look if you want. Might be a waste of time but the last thing I can think of for now.
Good luck.
Mike

PS- You may have already tried the above or it was already posted. If so I missed it.

My Task Manager doesn't work that way. In order for me to see the on going processes must go to Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Performance Monitor/Open Resource Manager. There's a lot of processes going on but none named Ask or About. While the Monitor was running I activated a voice command search but didn't see any Ask of About processes. So no luck so far but thanks for the head's up on running processes.

To the original OP.

I have a question. Please set the home page for Firefox to the default one (the mozilla page with the search bar). Then restart Firefox and type in whatever random stuff in the search engine (which is supposed to go to google) and tell me where it leads. In my case the search engine (and the one in IE) got hijacked by ask.com.

The thing is I have exactly the same problem, ask.com does not appear ANYWHERE in the program lists nor in the regedit but it hijacked my IE and Firefox (and the only thing I installed recently was Samsung KIES). Now I removed them as default search engine but the firefox homepage search is still hijacked and I cannot for the life of me find out how to remove it.

Obviously I can avoid using the page but I am bothered by the problem that I have no idea how it crept in and even worse it seems I cannot fully remove it, which is a problem.

Seems that my girlfriend managed to find a solution. In about:config I had to reset browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID;20111120135848 and
browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone;rv:8.0.1

So I guess i managed to remove it now but this one is extremely sneaky.

SLOFila said:

To the original OP.

I have a question. Please set the home page for Firefox to the default one (the mozilla page with the search bar). Then restart Firefox and type in whatever random stuff in the search engine (which is supposed to go to google) and tell me where it leads. In my case the search engine (and the one in IE) got hijacked by ask.com.

The thing is I have exactly the same problem, ask.com does not appear ANYWHERE in the program lists nor in the regedit but it hijacked my IE and Firefox (and the only thing I installed recently was Samsung KIES). Now I removed them as default search engine but the firefox homepage search is still hijacked and I cannot for the life of me find out how to remove it.

Obviously I can avoid using the page but I am bothered by the problem that I have no idea how it crept in and even worse it seems I cannot fully remove it, which is a problem.

I did what you asked and changed my change my homepage of the default page and then entered an item in the Google search bar. The Google search page was displayed rather than ask.com.

Ask.com and about.com are not activated from my browsers. The only time they appear is when I enter a vocal command to start the browsers in a search mode. When the browsers are already active ask.com and about.com don't hijack the search. I've done multible searchs of various kinds but have never discovered these programs although there were many cookies with various names involved with ask.co and about.com and of course I removed them.

It would seem evident to me that the problem is in some type of speech vocabulary rather than IE or FF. I don't use the speech recognition part of Windows but it must store verbs and actions since it also has a learning process available. I would look along those lines and not for Ask/About literals. The script or function is not likely to be named so it's easily found.

The next thing I'd do is put Ask-dot-com and About-dot-com in your Hosts file and direct it to 127.0.0.0. (Your machine.) Or put them in your Firewall so that nothing goes out or comes in from the site(s).