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This link describes my problem precisely, but the suggestion there did not work for me.

Ads by discountex - chrome : techsupport

But your suggestion proved to be correct, though it took me some time before I realized how to connect the dots.

Somehow my Chrome got set to Developer Build version, and when I checked for the latest version it told me that it was up to date. I reinstalled Chrome and a completely different version became the latest.

Now the problem is gone (hopefully for good), though it has been only one day.

I wonder if the virus that corrupted my Chrome is still hiding somewhere.

Thanks,
-BBDS

The Developer Build is different than the Developer mode for extensions.

The Developer Build applies to the version of Chrome itself.

The Developer mode for extensions is sort of explained in this FAQ.

You can have the regular (non Developer Build) version of Chrome and still have extensions that run in the developer mode.


Here is a random screenshot that a search for chrome extensions developer mode turned up:





So......
This link seems to be saying that extensions will only run if they come from:
1) Google's store
or
2) your computer (if Chrome is in the Developer mode).

A bad app on your computer would have to:
1) create these bad extensions
2) tell Chrome to run them in the Developer mode.


In a day or two, you are going to tell me that the bad extensions came back and the Developer mode was not checked. Then I can pull out the rest of my hair

boyboyds said:

~~~
I wonder if the virus that corrupted my Chrome is still hiding somewhere.
~~~

If you would like, I can ask someone to walk you thru all sort of scans to check for that.

boyboyds said:

This link describes my problem precisely, but the suggestion there did not work for me.

Ads by discountex - chrome : techsupport
~~~

> ...the suggestion there did not work for me.

The suggestion there might not have worked for the person that started that thread either. It might be too soon to tell for both of you. The infection (if there is one) might stop for a day or two if told to do so by those controlling it.

So far my PC is running without any issues. I ran a few stand alone scanners and they did not find the virus that caused the issue, maybe it did not even get installed on my PC.

Problem: Chrome browser got set to Development Version and it allowed the bad extension to be added to it.
Solution: Reinstall Chrome, make sure the new Chrome version does not have any "dev" as part of its name.

Thank you all for your help, especially @UsernameIssues.
-BBDS

boyboyds said:

....Also I did not get any useful info out of the MS Process Monitor, the folder I was including in the filtering had many Explorer.exe processors pointing to it, nothing specific to identify the intruder....

If you ever need to use Process Monitor again, take note that you can right click on Explorer.exe (or any other app/entry within Process Monitor) and exclude it from view. That should leave you with any remaining actors against the folder of interest.

boyboyds said:

So far my PC is running without any issues. I ran a few stand alone scanners and they did not find the virus that caused the issue, maybe it did not even get installed on my PC.

Problem: Chrome browser got set to Development Version and it allowed the bad extension to be added to it.
Solution: Reinstall Chrome, make sure the new Chrome version does not have any "dev" as part of its name.

Thank you all for your help, especially @UsernameIssues.
-BBDS

Glad to hear that it seems good so far