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

Posted on July 30, 2009 by Daniel

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.

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

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

A shame: Apparently, even Sourceforge.net cannot be fully trusted…
RoopJeans on September 10, 2009 at 12:41 pm said:

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.
Pingback: Quitar redirección a mybrowserbar.com y urlseek20.vmn.net
Richard Boynton on October 19, 2009 at 4:37 am said:

Same problem here you will find it is Search settings 1.2.1 in add/remove programs
gclarke on November 2, 2009 at 10:02 am said:

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

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

“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 …
Greyoke on November 13, 2009 at 6:57 pm said:

Thanks so much! That seems to have worked.
Pachmarhi on November 15, 2009 at 2:16 am said:

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

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

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)
Leodemontréal on November 29, 2009 at 3:57 am said:

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!!
Go Riders on November 30, 2009 at 6:41 pm said:

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!
Rex Mundi on December 1, 2009 at 6:49 pm said:

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!
Juan on December 12, 2009 at 5:27 am said:

Great, thanks, worked perfectly.
I used YouUninstaller and works. Cannot believe this guys doing this 1999 trick. Amazing. Never use their software again.
prying1 on December 15, 2009 at 10:53 am said:

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

Thanks
George on December 26, 2009 at 11:45 pm said:

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!!!
Ian McCluskey on January 6, 2010 at 3:59 am said:

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

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

Thanks. It did work 100% for me…just uninstalling PDFforge toolbar!
sujith pillai on January 12, 2010 at 12:23 pm said:

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

Nice, worked, bloody pain it was!
Imran on January 18, 2010 at 2:05 pm said:

Thanks for this nice tip…. This mybrowserbar.com was driving me nuts… Removing the PDFForge toolbar was the solution….
imran on January 19, 2010 at 2:08 am said:

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 !
pmheart6 on February 2, 2010 at 10:58 am said:

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

Thanks! It did the trick. Like others, I left some nasty feedback.
pfshore on February 8, 2010 at 4:25 pm said:

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!
GFItaly on February 11, 2010 at 5:26 am said:

I removed SearchSettingv1.2.3 and now it’s OK.
Markus on February 17, 2010 at 1:52 pm said:

thank you for helping
Tushar on February 19, 2010 at 12:53 am said:

It worked. Thank you very much.
Grapjurk on February 19, 2010 at 1:04 pm said:

Worked great ! thanks.
gast on February 26, 2010 at 5:03 pm said:

Thank you. It work with revouninstaller!
Phil LondonUK on March 3, 2010 at 9:49 am said:

A case study in how to lose goodwill instantly. Sourceforge and PDFCreator should be ashamed.
Giacomo del'Farte on March 7, 2010 at 8:46 am said:

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

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

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?
Daniel on March 12, 2010 at 11:45 am said:

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

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

Right, I checked my add/remove, there’s no PDFforger or search-whatever. What am I supposed to do now?
Adam on March 23, 2010 at 2:44 pm said:

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

In my case, i removed ASK toolbar
i found another culprit on March 29, 2010 at 9:00 am said:

on my laptop, the culprit was Dealio toolbar.
Andy23 on April 6, 2010 at 1:12 pm said:

i dont have in Add or Remove Programs program “PDFforge toolbar” or “Search settings 1.2.2” and it still downloading new shits!
nozero on April 8, 2010 at 8:09 am said:

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!
Louise on April 13, 2010 at 7:10 pm said:

Thank u sooo much, Pachmarhi ! I was already going crazy with this damn malware!
Andi on April 17, 2010 at 4:39 pm said:

Thank you very much for this posting. I removed ist from my computer and now everything is ok!
Andi on April 17, 2010 at 4:43 pm said:

Thank you very much for this good hint. I removed it from my computer, and now, everything is ok!
Lucy on April 19, 2010 at 7:17 am said:

Thank you so much for this. I had to uninstall the you tube downloader toolbar to remove this intrusive app.
Ron Williams on April 19, 2010 at 10:31 pm said:

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

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

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

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