Malicious programs can modify shortcuts in such a way that when opening, in addition to running the designated program, additional unwanted actions were performed, so one of the steps in many manuals to remove malicious programs indicate "Check browsers labels" (or any other). About how to make it manually or using third-party programs - in this article. It can also be useful: Malware removal tools.
Note: Since the question in question most often concerns the inspection of browser labels, it will be about them, although all the ways are applicable to other program shortcuts in Windows.
Check browsers manually
A simple and effective way to check browsers labels is to make it manually to the means of the system. Steps will be the same in Windows 10, 8 and Windows 7.
Note: If you want to check the shortcuts on the taskbar, first go to the folder with these shortcuts, for this in the address bar, enter the following path and press ENTER
% APPDATA% \ Microsoft \ Internet Explorer \ Quick Launch \ User Pinned \ Taskbar- Click the right-click shortcut and select "Properties".
- In properties, check the contents of the "Object" field on the "Label" tab. Further lists those moments that may say that something is wrong with the browser's label.
- If, after the path to the executable browser file, some site address is specified - it was probably added to malicious software.
- If the file extension in the "Object" field .Bat, and not .exe and we are talking about the browser - then, apparently, with a label, too, not everything is in order (that is, it has been submenuble).
- If the path to the file to start the browser differs from the location where the browser is actually installed (they are usually installed in Program Files).
How to do if you saw that the label is "infected"? The easiest way is to manually specify the placement of the browser file in the "Object" field or simply remove the shortcut and create it again in the desired location (and pre-clean the computer from malicious programs so that the situation does not happen). In order to create a shortcut - right-click on an empty desktop location or folder, select "Create" - "shortcut" and specify the path to the executable browser file.
Standard locations of the executable (used to start) a file of popular browsers (can be both in Program Files X86 and simply in Program Files, depending on the system of system and browser):
- Google Chrome - C: \ Program Files (x86) \ Google \ Chrome \ Application \ chrome.exe
- Internet Explorer - C: \ Program Files \ Internet Explorer \ iexplore.exe
- Mozilla Firefox - C: \ Program Files (x86) \ Mozilla Firefox \ Firefox.exe
- Opera - C: \ Program Files \ Opera \ Launcher.exe
- Yandex Browser - C: \ Users \ Username \ APPDATA \ Local \ Yandex \ YandexBrowser \ Application \ Browser.exe
Programs for checking shortcuts
Taking into account the relevance of the problem, free utilities appeared to check the safety of shortcuts in Windows (by the way, tried excellent in all respects to combat malicious programs, AdwCleaner and a couple of others - there is not realized).Among such programs, at the moment you can note the Roguekiller Anti-Malware (a complex tool that, including checks the browser labels), Phrozen Software Shortcut Scanner and Check Browsers LNK. Just in case: after downloading, check the similar little-known utilities using Virustotal (at the time of writing this article they are completely clean, but I can not guarantee that it will always be).
Shortcut Scanner.
The first of the programs is available in the form of Portable version separately for x86 and x64 systems on the official website https://www.phrozensoft.com/2017/01/shortcut-scanner-20. The use of the program is as follows:
- Click on the icon on the right side of the menu and select which scan to use. The first item - Full Scan scans shortcuts on all discs.
- Upon completion of the scan, you will see a list of shortcuts and their locations distributed in the following categories: Dangerous shortcuts (dangerous shortcuts), Shortcuts That Require Attention (requiring attention, suspicious).
- Having adding each of the shortcuts, in the bottom line of the program you can see which command runs this shortcut (this can give information about what exactly it is wrong).
The program menu includes items for cleaning (removal) selected shortcuts, but in my test they did not work (and, judging by the comments on the official website, do not work for other users in Windows 10). However, using the information received, you can delete or change suspicious shortcuts manually.
Check Browsers LNK.
A small Check Browsers LNK utility is designed specifically to check the browser labels and works as follows:
- Run the utility and wait for some time (the author also recommends turning off the antivirus).
- In the location of the Check Browsers LNK program, the LOG folder is created with a text file inside, containing information about the dangerous labels and the commands that they perform.
The received information can be used to independently correcting shortcuts or for automatic "treatment" using the ClearlNK program of the same author (you need to transfer the log file to the ClearlNK executable file to correct). You can download Check Browsers LNK from the official page https://toolslib.net/downloads/viewdownload/80-check-browsers-lnk/
I hope the information turned out to be useful, and you were able to get rid of malicious programs on the computer. If something does not work, write in detail in the comments, I will try to help.