How to Remove Launchpad.org “Virus”

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Welcome to our Launchpad.org “Virus” removal guide. The following instructions will aid you in removing the unwanted software from your PC.

Are you disturbed by an intrusive piece of software named Launchpad.org “Virus”, which has taken over your Chrome or Firefox browser recently? It has probably imposed some changes to your homepage, added a new toolbar or replaced your search engine with some unknown one and all that without even asking for your approval. Moreover, now every time you open your browser, you probably get redirected to sites full of aggressively popping ads and web locations that you never intended to visit. If this sounds somehow familiar to you and you are forced to endure such a browsing-related disturbance, then on this page you are going to find a solution that will help you remove Launchpad.org “Virus” and all of its annoying changes.

Why has Launchpad.org “Virus” invaded your PC and what is it doing?

Launchpad.org is a browser hijacker. Now, if you would immediately relate to a nasty virus when you hear the name browser hijacker – don’t. Browser hijackers are not malicious and they have nothing in common with computer viruses or harmful threats like Trojans, Ransomware and other very destructive malware. Programs like Launchpad.org are basically developed as advertising tools, used by the online marketing industry to display a huge amount of advertisements on the users’ screen. They are often involved in the popular Pay-Per-Click model, which gains revenues for clicks on specific sponsored notifications or web pages, displayed by the browser hijacker. This is the reason why these programs are behaving so aggressively and literally modify (aka hijack) the settings in your browser so that you get redirected to as many ads as possible and eventually click on some of them. Launchpad.org is doing the same thing on your computer – it basically ensures that every time you open your browser, you will be flooded with specific marketing messages and have no option but to click on them. This could bring more profit for the owners of the program, however, for the users, the behavior of the browser hijacker could be a real nuisance.

Is Launchpad.org a harmful program and how can it affect your PC and security?

The browser hijackers and Launchpad.org, in particular, do not represent a serious security problem. They are not capable of harming your system, corrupting your files, or performing online fraud and other malicious activities. These are specialties of real malware like Trojan horses, Ransomware and sophisticated viruses that are specifically created to do some harm. A browser hijacker, however, may cause some other type of disturbance and may really ruin the user’s normal online browsing experience. Thus, you may often hear this type of software to be referred to as potentially unwanted. Many users really end up uninstalling these programs and there are some good reasons for that. Not only can it be quite annoying to be flooded with a bunch of pop-ups, intrusive ads, and sponsored notifications, but dealing with them could be a total mess. Most of the times closing one may bring ten more on the screen or you may get redirected to some sketchy sites with insecure content. This way, you may unknowingly be exposed to some security risks and nasty online threats, because you never know how safe the ads and pages you land on are.

Browser hijackers are also famous for their ability to collect different user information, usually related to people’s browsing habits, browsing history, the web pages they visit, bookmarks, shares, and likes. Named as “traffic data”, this information could be used for various marketing purposes and for more effective and aggressive ad-displaying campaigns on your screen. Your system may also have some issues with the browser hijacker, since it may consume some good amount of CPU and RAM resources for its ads-displaying and page redirecting activities. All in all, this may be too much of a disturbance for some people, and if you are one of them, you have all the right to remove the annoying program from your PC.

How to remove Launchpad.org and protect your PC in the future?

Just below this article, you will find a removal guide, which is dedicated specifically to the removal of Launchpad.org from your machine. You can use it and easily get rid of all the annoying changes and redirects that have taken place on your browser. Once you are done, however, you should know how to protect your system in the future. For that, we would advise you to generally avoid sketchy web locations, spam, free downloads, torrents, too-good-to-be-true offers and different popping advertisements and notifications. They may all contain browser hijackers like Launchpad.org since these programs are usually distributed far and wide on the web. They usually could be found in some free installers or attractive software bundles, packed with some other software. To prevent them getting installed on your PC, you should always check the bundles that you are about to install for such programs. Use the Advanced/Custom option for that to ensure that you’ve customized the setup and disabled the potentially unwanted software. 

How to Remove Launchpad.org “Virus”

I – Uninstallation

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1. Use the Winkey+R keyboard combination, write Control Panel in the search field and hit enter.
   
2. Go to Uninstall a program under Programs.
   
3. Seek the unwanted software, select it and then click on Uninstall
   1. If you are unable to spot Launchpad.org, search for any unrecognized programs that you do not remember installing on your PC – the unwanted software might disguise itself by going under a different name.

II – Safe mode and revealing hidden files

1. Boot your PC into Safe Mode /link/
2. Reveal hidden files and folders /link/

III – Cleaning all your browsers

1. Go to your browser’s icon, right-click on it and select Properties.
   
2. Go to the Shortcut tab and in the Target make sure to delete anything written after “.exe”.
   
3. Now, open your browser and follow the instructions below depending on whether you are using Chrome, Mozilla or IE.

• Chrome users:

1. Go to your browser’s main menu located in the top-right corner of the screen and select Settings.
   
2. Scroll down, click on Show Advanced Settings and then select Clear browsing data. Just to be sure, tick everything and clear the data.
   
3. Now, in the left pane, go to Extensions and look through all extensions that are integrated within your browser. If you notice any suspicious add-on, disable it and then remove it.
   

• Firefox users:

1. Similarly to Chrome, go to the main menu and select Add-ons and then Extensions.
2. Remove any suspicious browser extensions that you may have even if they do not have the name Launchpad.org on them.

• IE users:

1. Go to Tools and select Manage add-ons.
   
2. Click on all add-on types from the left pane and check if there is anything suspicious in the right panel. In case you find anything shade, make sure to remove it.

IV – Removing Shady processes

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1. Go to your start menu, type Task Manager in the search field and from the results open View running processes with Task Manager.
   
2. Thoroughly look through all processes. The name Launchpad.org might not be there, but if you notice any shady looking process that consumes high amounts of memory it might be ran by the unwanted program.
3. If you spot the process ran by Launchpad.org, right-click on it, open its file location and delete everything in there. Then go back to the Task Manager and end the process.
   

V – DNS check

1. In the start menu search box write View Network Connections and open the first result.
   
2. Right-click on the network connection you are using and go to Properties.
   
3. Select Internet Protocol Version (TCP/IPv4) and click on Properties.
   
4. If Obtain DNS server addresses automatically is not checked, check it.
   
5. Go to Advanced and select the DNS If there is anything in the DNS server addresses field, remove it and click OK.
   
6. Click OK on the rest of the opened windows.