Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty

How to remove "urlseek20.vmn.net" and the mybrowserbar.com malware

Posted: July 30th, 2009 | Author: Daniel | Filed under: computers | Tags: | 77 Comments »

If you install PDFCreator, without asking, the program installs a program called PDFforge toolbar. Afterwards, if you get a 404 error (webpage not found) when surfing the web, the PDFforge toolbar hijacks your browser and automatically redirects you to urlseek20.vmn.net using mybrowserbar.com.

To fix this problem, go to Add or Remove Programs and uninstall “PDFforge toolbar.”  Luckily it’s that simple.  

I didn’t think there would be a problem downloading and installing PDFCreator because it is hosted on Sourceforge.net, but I was wrong. The developers secretly install the PDFforge toolbar to make some money off of ad revenue from urlseek20.vmn.net. It’s underhanded and wrong, but luckily it is simple to uninstall.

77 Comments on “How to remove "urlseek20.vmn.net" and the mybrowserbar.com malware”

  1. 1 Oriolus said at 6:57 am on July 31st, 2009:

    A shame: Apparently, even Sourceforge.net cannot be fully trusted…

  2. 2 RoopJeans said at 12:41 pm on September 10th, 2009:

    i have teh same problem in xp,
    i have checked my all installed programes in add remove. but i couldnt see PDF forge tool bar.
    any further help in that regard please?i have hell of data and reinstalltio of OS seems a big sea to cross now.
    i will appriciate if you can guid eme through that.

  3. 3 Quitar redirección a mybrowserbar.com y urlseek20.vmn.net said at 5:19 pm on October 9th, 2009:

    [...] solución a este problema, gracias a DR5, es tan sencilla como desinstalar la barra (que instalamos sin saber), llamada pdfforge, de [...]

  4. 4 Richard Boynton said at 4:37 am on October 19th, 2009:

    Same problem here you will find it is Search settings 1.2.1 in add/remove programs

  5. 5 gclarke said at 10:02 am on November 2nd, 2009:

    Thanks for that quick tip. It worked for me, and I left them some nasty feedback when they had the nerve to open up a browser with a survey of why I uninstalled their toolbar. I didn’t leave my email address, though. Who knows what they would have sent ;-)

  6. 6 J Bissell said at 8:46 pm on November 3rd, 2009:

    Thanks a ton for the explanation and clear removal instructions. I’m on XP and it has apparently worked.

    I have used PDF Creator for years, and this is very disappointing. I couldn’t imagine how I had gotten this silly thing. I will leave feedback at Sourceforge – this sort of exploit diminishes open source.

  7. 7 Ed Addis said at 12:08 pm on November 8th, 2009:

    “Same problem here you will find it is Search settings 1.2.1 in add/remove programs”

    Can you please explain this? I have no Search/Settings option in Add/Remove Programs …

  8. 8 Greyoke said at 6:57 pm on November 13th, 2009:

    Thanks so much! That seems to have worked.

  9. 9 Pachmarhi said at 2:16 am on November 15th, 2009:

    Search settings 1.2.1, or, as in my case Search settings 1.2.2, is the name of the program you choose to uninstall, it is not an option within Add/Remove Programs.

  10. 10 MCC said at 8:15 am on November 20th, 2009:

    Search Settings 1.2.1 was the culprit – THANK YOU for the tip. Searched a lot of forums before finding this one. Got rid of it from Add/REmove Programs – now Fireforx is no longer highjacked to the mybrowserbar 404 page

  11. 11 whitey said at 6:19 pm on November 28th, 2009:

    Mine was listed as Search settings 1.2.1 (Richard Boynton). It was slipped in when I installed Free AVCHD Converter V1.0. (I guess nothing is truly free)

  12. 12 Leodemontréal said at 3:57 am on November 29th, 2009:

    It worked there where malware and adware failed! Or maybe they weren’t meant to recognize the problem in the first place. I did a lot of searched as well before coming to this one. Thank you all! You are the Heroes of the day, in my book that is.
    Love and Peace!!

  13. 13 Go Riders said at 6:41 pm on November 30th, 2009:

    I can see the program in Add or Remove programs, but when I try to remove PDFForge toolbar I get an error message:
    “The Windows Installer service could not be accessed.”

    I have no problem removing other programs, however. Any ideas how to get around that?
    Much appreciated!

  14. 14 Rex Mundi said at 6:49 pm on December 1st, 2009:

    From Add or Remove programs, I can not remove the PDFforge toolbar. I get an error saying that the Windows Installer service can not be accessed, however the Windows Installer service works for everything else. How can I get around this problem? any thoughts would be much appreciated!

  15. 15 Juan said at 5:27 am on December 12th, 2009:

    Great, thanks, worked perfectly.
    I used YouUninstaller and works. Cannot believe this guys doing this 1999 trick. Amazing. Never use their software again.

  16. 16 prying1 said at 10:53 am on December 15th, 2009:

    Thanks – I used CCleaner and that did the trick. after deleting the program I retraced my steps that led me to a mybrowserbar redirect and it has stopped. I appreciate your directions. Especially when it was so simple.

  17. 17 mx5 said at 2:23 pm on December 15th, 2009:

    Thanks

  18. 18 George said at 11:45 pm on December 26th, 2009:

    Search settings 1.2.2 in my case. I’ve hunted high and low to figure this out. Thank you. I hope it’s finally gone!!!

  19. 19 Ian McCluskey said at 3:59 am on January 6th, 2010:

    Your Uninstaller appears to have worked where nothing else did – 21 day free trial during which I shall look very closely at what has ‘sneaked’ on to my PC :( I am usually more aware than this – to be caught out by a toolbar!

    Thanks to those for the info :)

  20. 20 Eastander said at 1:01 pm on January 7th, 2010:

    When I try to remove Search Setting v1.2.2. I get ‘Error 1316: A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file C:\windows\installer\searchsettings.msi’.
    Similarly with Dealio Toolbar, same path, file dealiotoolbar.msi.
    Both give ‘support information’ in Add/Remove programs as ‘Spigot, Inc 1.0.1′, whose site is completely unhelpful.
    How can I get rid of these please? No PDF forge toolbar found.

  21. 21 Petrica V. said at 8:40 pm on January 8th, 2010:

    Thanks. It did work 100% for me…just uninstalling PDFforge toolbar!

  22. 22 sujith pillai said at 12:23 pm on January 12th, 2010:

    hai frnds,
    those who tried and failed by using add/remove thru control panel…….well i suggest you to download revo uninstaller link is here ……http://www.revouninstaller.com/revo_uninstaller_free_download.html …freeware is enough using this you can completly remove the “search setting”…it completly remove its registry too…aftr that to confirm just chk on control panel if apperas just remove …it will disappear (by using this prgm you can uninstall such programs which don’t hav a uninstaller mode…..i hope this will work ……bye

  23. 23 Blagger said at 5:45 am on January 17th, 2010:

    Nice, worked, bloody pain it was!

  24. 24 Imran said at 2:05 pm on January 18th, 2010:

    Thanks for this nice tip…. This mybrowserbar.com was driving me nuts… Removing the PDFForge toolbar was the solution….

  25. 25 imran said at 2:08 am on January 19th, 2010:

    if there is ever not-found page, then such adware redirects to a website. anyways, remove dealio tool bar – try if you can find it in add/remove programs in control panel. you must un-install all useless programs as well, its good to stay clean !

  26. 26 pmheart6 said at 10:58 am on February 2nd, 2010:

    yea, it installed the toolbar even though I unchecked the box. It’s disabled in Firefox, but still redirecting. I’ll try the add/remove programs now.

  27. 27 pfshore said at 4:22 pm on February 8th, 2010:

    Thanks! It did the trick. Like others, I left some nasty feedback.

  28. 28 pfshore said at 4:25 pm on February 8th, 2010:

    Just a quick follow-up. So, the URL that “didn’t work” two minutes ago (when mybrowserbar was still installed), works just fine now that it’s been removed! It’s not just hijacking legitimate 404 msgs, it’s hijacking users away from real connections!! They’re not going to be happy to hear what I have to say now!

  29. 29 GFItaly said at 5:26 am on February 11th, 2010:

    I removed SearchSettingv1.2.3 and now it’s OK.

  30. 30 Markus said at 1:52 pm on February 17th, 2010:

    thank you for helping

  31. 31 Tushar said at 12:53 am on February 19th, 2010:

    It worked. Thank you very much.

  32. 32 Grapjurk said at 1:04 pm on February 19th, 2010:

    Worked great ! thanks.

  33. 33 gast said at 5:03 pm on February 26th, 2010:

    Thank you. It work with revouninstaller!

  34. 34 Phil LondonUK said at 9:49 am on March 3rd, 2010:

    A case study in how to lose goodwill instantly. Sourceforge and PDFCreator should be ashamed.

  35. 35 Giacomo del'Farte said at 8:46 am on March 7th, 2010:

    Vista, 32bit: browser=Mozilla Firefox v 3.6:
    Had Acrobat 6.0 installed on my old machine. Now, on Vista 32bit it has compatibility issues. Downloaded PDFcreator. Then had problems when I had been editing Wikipedia and attempted to edit my profile. My browser (Firefox 3.6) was automatically redirected to http://www.mybrowserbar.com after an apparent error (no, there was no error).
    I found http://www.mybrowserbar.com/ in several places in the registry:
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Application Updater, in serverURL
    also as the Mozilla Firefox extension pdfforge@mybrowserbar.com

    I have since gone back to using Acrobat 6.0 (which works well enough in compatibility mode for XP SP2).
    I won’t be going back to Sourceforge or PDF creator any day (soon or not). Giving them a bad press is too good for those who push this crap about.

  36. 36 emmeff said at 9:40 am on March 7th, 2010:

    Thanks. found and removed ‘PDF forge toolbar’. I agree with an earlier poster that ‘mybrowserbar’ seems to hijack the search function and actively redirect users to the revenue generating page.

  37. 37 jkno said at 4:37 am on March 12th, 2010:

    So “ScourgeForge” gave us this malware intentionally? But I still need the PDF Creator, any way in deleting the MyBrowseBar and keeping the PDF Creator?

  38. 38 Daniel said at 11:45 am on March 12th, 2010:

    I think there is, but I’m not sure. I got pissed off at PDF Creator and just deleted it from my system when I figured out to how to get rid of MyBrowswerBar.

  39. 39 georgi said at 8:52 am on March 16th, 2010:

    Thanks for the tip, everything’s fine now. I’ve been using PDFCreator for years, they must have started doing this recently (I had the problem since the last new install a couple of days ago) but still it’s wrong and ugly. I still absolutely insist on my right to fave FULL control over what is hosted and what is running on MY machines and and trespassing is not the Free software way.

  40. 40 P said at 12:08 am on March 19th, 2010:

    Right, I checked my add/remove, there’s no PDFforger or search-whatever. What am I supposed to do now?

  41. 41 Adam said at 2:44 pm on March 23rd, 2010:

    Thanks a MILLION. I was killing myself trying to figure out what in Firefox was causing this. Of course, the problem was that this little stinker was outside of my browser the entire time.

    Many thanks for the tip on how to get rid of this thing.

  42. 42 Nasam said at 1:52 pm on March 27th, 2010:

    In my case, i removed ASK toolbar

  43. 43 i found another culprit said at 9:00 am on March 29th, 2010:

    on my laptop, the culprit was Dealio toolbar.

  44. 44 Andy23 said at 1:12 pm on April 6th, 2010:

    i dont have in Add or Remove Programs program “PDFforge toolbar” or “Search settings 1.2.2” and it still downloading new shits! :(

  45. 45 nozero said at 8:09 am on April 8th, 2010:

    Removed the PDFforge toolbar from Win 7 via Control Panel Programs and Features, but the problem remained.

    Checked the Firefox Tools/Addons and found Search Settingsw 1.2.3 and disabled it and this resolved the issue.

    Thank You!

  46. 46 Louise said at 7:10 pm on April 13th, 2010:

    Thank u sooo much, Pachmarhi ! I was already going crazy with this damn malware! :)

  47. 47 Andi said at 4:39 pm on April 17th, 2010:

    Thank you very much for this posting. I removed ist from my computer and now everything is ok!

  48. 48 Andi said at 4:43 pm on April 17th, 2010:

    Thank you very much for this good hint. I removed it from my computer, and now, everything is ok!

  49. 49 Lucy said at 7:17 am on April 19th, 2010:

    Thank you so much for this. I had to uninstall the you tube downloader toolbar to remove this intrusive app.

  50. 50 Ron Williams said at 10:31 pm on April 19th, 2010:

    I found that just uninstalling PDFForge in Vista got rid of mybrowserbar for me.

  51. 51 Scott said at 10:24 am on April 20th, 2010:

    Hey guys! Like some ppl here, I uninstalled PDFForge toolbar using Add/Remove programs, but it still re-directed my browser after 404s! Spigot installed an add-on that was still active called “SearchSettings Class”.
    If you already uninstalled and still getting redirects, go into ‘Manage Add-Ons” and chances are this will be enabled in there!

  52. 52 Ali Waqas said at 3:28 pm on May 1st, 2010:

    in my case the culprit was Youtube Downloader Toolbar…for those who cant find PDFForge, try to look for the above in the Add/Remove programs utility….

  53. 53 Name (required) said at 7:26 pm on May 2nd, 2010:

    THANKS! Not even my Norton’s caught this! Proves exactly what I thought about the Norton’s! Just removed the toolbar, restarted Firefox and all better!

  54. 54 lEANDRO said at 7:42 pm on May 6th, 2010:

    Thanks a lot,and if it dosen’t show on add/remove programs,use ccleaner to remove it.

  55. 55 Amin A Rahman said at 10:11 am on May 7th, 2010:

    I could not find neither;
    a)PDF forge, nor
    b)Search settings 1.2.1,
    But i found “Youtube downloader Toolbar V1.0″ that manage to solve the trouble.

    Anyway, i use Vista> Setting> Control Panel> Program & Features> UNINSTALL “Youtube downloader Toolbar V1.0″.

    sHaring is cAring, Adioz, Welcome World Cup!

  56. 56 Malki obiavi said at 3:01 pm on May 12th, 2010:

    Тhanks!

  57. 57 Lori Pedford said at 9:03 am on May 18th, 2010:

    Thank you sooooo much for taking the time to share this information with the world!!!!!!! That thing was driving me nuts!

  58. 58 MAriano said at 2:21 pm on May 24th, 2010:

    Fantastico!!!

    Muchas gracias.

    Muy bueno el aporte.

    Saludos desde Madrid.

  59. 59 Guri S said at 5:14 pm on May 28th, 2010:

    I think we are all mistaken. I too removed the software and thought I was done with mybrowserbar. I think the all traffic is still being sent thru to mybrowserbar.com

    I have google analytics for my small business and noticed that everytime I would go to my business website, the traffic source would say mybroswerbar.com

    I think there is something installed on my computer that directs traffic thru mybrowserbar even with the toolbar not active on my computer.

    Unless u have a way to check, you would think that the problem is solved.

  60. 60 Excalibur said at 12:45 am on June 1st, 2010:

    My problem is, Ive never installed anything PDF-y or sourceforge-y. If anything, I just got AVG antivirus.
    this damn thing hasnt left anything in my add-ons or programs, so how do I get rid of it?

  61. 61 Ed Gerton said at 8:11 am on June 2nd, 2010:

    I have Vista and Firefox running on my work laptop. I got this after installing a new version of PDFcreator, which I had used successfully for several months. I disabled PDFForge from the Firefox addon list and uninstalled the program from add/remove programs. Seems to have solved the problem.

  62. 62 Bill Bush said at 9:50 am on June 19th, 2010:

    I found your blog first by scroogling (http://www.scroogle.org check it out) the phrase “remove mybrowserbar” …

    I removed the PDF toolbar and the SearchSettings from the add/uninstall programs utility and the prob went away just fine :o ) … Thanks!

  63. 63 VERNER said at 1:21 pm on June 21st, 2010:

    ALSO if some guys still figuring what is ther problem : YOUTUBE DOWNLOADER TOOLBAR also has this included!

  64. 64 Brian said at 6:11 pm on June 23rd, 2010:

    Thanks for posting! It was hijacking my home page everytime and couldn’t figure out why until I ran across this page. Uninstalled and now all is well. Using Firefox and Win 7. THANKS!

  65. 65 Jonny said at 11:31 pm on June 24th, 2010:

    I’m impressed. It took years before Malware crept its way into my Firefox. I wonder how long before it creeps into my Chrome? I will sooth my worries with some Avatar 3D soundtrack.

  66. 66 mybrowserbar.com page appears if page not found said at 1:57 am on June 28th, 2010:

    [...] Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Mumbai Age: 25 Posts: 926 Also check this How to remove "urlseek20.vmn.net" and the mybrowserbar.com malware | Life, Liberty, and Pr… Reply With Quote + Reply to Thread  Bookmark  Email   [...]

  67. 67 mandy said at 5:59 am on July 5th, 2010:

    thankyou so much it was search settings v1.2.3 for me, via the Dealio toolbar

  68. 68 Whizzy said at 9:21 am on July 8th, 2010:

    In my case the crap came in with Youtubedownloader (setup version 256) hidden as bienesoft/youtubedownloader toolbar

  69. 69 Nick said at 2:41 am on July 26th, 2010:

    Thanks for advice. Mine was installed with youtubedownloader toolbar too, once i uninstalled that it mybrowserbar had the gall to ask for feedback, the second part something about how to improve the software. by not installing malware would be a good start!

  70. 70 Sunit Pareek said at 12:58 am on July 27th, 2010:

    In my case it was the YouTubedownloader. But here too it was easy to remove.. Just removed the Youtubedownloader toolbar/

  71. 71 Bluey said at 6:07 am on July 29th, 2010:

    Mine was in Dealio as part of Free Easy Burner. Mongrels!!! It isn’t a simple search error fixing program. It hijacks properly working pages on some sites. Does it consistently on Ebay. Anyway, it’s hopefully gone now. At least it no longer hijacks pages.

  72. 72 Azo said at 10:32 am on July 29th, 2010:

    I’ll send a mail full of hate to these mofos!
    Thank you very much for the tip my man!

  73. 73 Name Chriistine said at 2:04 pm on July 31st, 2010:

    Thank you so much for the info. I found it at add/remove programs in control panel as
    “Search settings 1.2.3″
    I wish they would have asked my opinion …I would have given them an earful.
    Thanks again.

  74. 74 George said at 11:37 pm on August 4th, 2010:

    I had the same thing except i got it off the mozilla add-on site (wow) it came hidden with this youtube downloader i was trying out. I sorted my “Uninstall a Program” window by “Installed On” and pinpointed this program with no icon, named, of course, “Youtube downloader toolbar”. After removing this the tracker was gone :D

  75. 75 Joonas said at 2:40 pm on August 6th, 2010:

    I had the same problem. I had no PDFforge toolbar. But i had this Dealio toolbar. Removing it fixed the problem :D

  76. 76 Mark said at 5:33 pm on August 6th, 2010:

    Thank you for the info. Helps a lot!!!

  77. 77 Zomaar said at 5:08 pm on August 17th, 2010:

    In some cases just uninstall Youtube Downloader!

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