How to Remove Startpage Search Engine

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Welcome to our Startpage Search Engine removal guide. The following instructions will aid you in removing the unwanted software from your PC.

Welcome to the Startpage Search Engine removal guide. If you’ve got pissed off of the intrusive behavior of this browser hijacker, and you really want to uninstall all of the annoying changes that it has probably imposed to your Chrome, Firefox or IE browser, then you’ve come to the right place. You’ve probably been searching for ways to effectively remove this program from your computer and save yourself from its aggressively popping ads, new tabs and constant page redirects, so on this page, we are going to show you exactly how to do that. No long explanations, no complex instructions for computer ninjas – just a step-by-step removal guide which can help you detect and fully eliminate Startpage Search Engine and all of the annoyance it might have created. In case you need some more details about the nature of this software and the most effective ways to keep it away from your system, it is a good idea to read the information below.  It will give you a better idea about Startpage Search Engine and the way you can deal with it, so you can successfully uninstall all of its traces from your computer.

Startpage Search Engine – a browser hijacker with huge disturbing potential.

Startpage Search Engine is a program, which has the potential to create a huge browsing related disturbance. It falls into the category of the infamous browser hijackers – pieces of software, created with marketing purposes, which are usually programmed to hijack the users’ browsers and flood them with specific sponsored advertisements. These programs are basically used to promote different products, services, and web pages, but very often, the way they do that quite aggressively. They may take over the entire browser, substitute the users’ homepage with some promoted website or replace their search engine and redirect them to certain ads, products, sales, and promotions. You can mostly catch them from software bundles, spam, free installers, shareware, torrents or different sketchy and advertisement sites.

The people who create such types of software (mostly vendors, producers and software developers) basically profit from it by collecting paid clicks from the displayed advertisements through the popular Pay-Per-Click remuneration model. There is nothing wrong or suspicious about that, but sometimes, in their strive for more clicks and profits, they may overdo it with a number of marketing materials they expose the users to. This, on the other hand, may create some irritation and severely disturb the normal browsing activity of the affected people. Therefore, they may wish to save themselves from the ads invasion on their screen.  

Could Startpage Search Engine be a computer virus or some nasty malware?

Luckily, if you have Startpage Search Engine on your PC, there is nothing much to be concerned about. You’ve not been infected with a virus or some stealthy malware like a Trojan horse or Ransomware cryptovirus. Still, some people, who face a browser hijacker like this one for the first time, may get really worried and may wrongly refer to it as a virus. If you are one of them, then let us ease your mind. No browser hijacker has ever been classified as malicious so far. Moreover, a browser hijacker does not contain malicious scripts or some harmful code that could possibly harm your system or your files. This is a specialty of real malware like computer viruses, Trojans, and Ransomware. A program like Startpage Search Engine could never be this malicious and the worst it could do is mess with your browser and your online activity.

For some users, however, even this may be enough disturbance, so they may wish to remove the program from their computers despite that it is not really malicious. In fact, the browser hijacker may also affect the speed of the infected browser, make it unresponsive to the users’ searches, or even cause it to frequently crash. It may also use some serious amount of system resources for displaying its useless ads and pop-ups, this way affecting the overall performance of the PC. The advertisers may also use it to collect some data, related to your latest web searches, your browsing history, and bookmarks, and use it for their marketing purposes. This may be considered as a bit of a privacy invasion, which may really convince the users to uninstall the browser hijacker from their machine. 

Remove Startpage Search Engine

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 Startpage Search Engine, 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 Startpage Search Engine 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 Startpage Search Engine 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 Startpage Search Engine, 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.