Appearing “OpenCandy Ads” on your Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers is a clear sign that this Open Candy adware has breached the security of your computer. However, by following the instructions of this removal guideline you will be able to remove OpenCandy browser hijacker from your computer permanently.
What is OpenCandy? and how to remove it?
OpenCandy is an adware program. This infection contains several potentially unwanted applications, such as toolbars, adware and other add-ons. The rootkit capabilities of this infection hooks deep into your operating system and starts interfering with the user experience. However, you can solve all these issues after you delete OpenCandy popups from your computer by using our removal techniques. PUP.optional.OpenCandy, PUA.OpenCandy
How OpenCandy entered your computer?
This adware would have gotten onto your computer after you would have installed a freeware which was bundled with this infection. The basic purpose of this adware is to replace your search page with OpenCandy website and use blackhat SEO techniques to inflate the ranking of this website for boosting advertising revenue. Although the changes made by this infection may seem irreversible, but you can undo them after you uninstall OpenCandy infection from your computer by following our removal methods.
Why complete removal of OpenCandy necessary?
Entries made by this infection on your computer are at multiple levels ranging from browser settings to registry files. Unless a removal technique completely removes all these entries from your computer this infection can reappear in future. However, when you get rid of OpenCandy infection by implementing our removal methods you make sure that this infection is completely removed from your system.
What are symptoms of OpenCandy infection?
This adware can be identified by these symptoms: Pop-up ads are interrupting your web browsing sessions. Your search queries are being redirected to an unknown search engine. Malicious web links are added to web pages for increasing page ranking of a website.
How to protect from OpenCandy infection?
You will have to take precautionary measures in future to protect your computer from such infections. Avoid installing freeware without verifying their security credentials. Prefer Custom or Advanced method during software installation and uncheck anything that is not familiar. Check your computer security with an antivirus and an anti-malware program.
How to remove OpenCandy Ads?
Now you will learn about manual and software removal methods on how to remove OpenCandy from your computer. Perform the below given steps of your chosen method in correct order to eliminate this infection from your computer.
Follow the steps to Remove OpenCandy.
Method 1 – Manual Removal Guide.
- Remove OpenCandy from “Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome” (Manual Steps).
- Remove OpenCandy virus from “Windows Shortcuts” (Manual Steps).
- Remove OpenCandy malicious program from “Registry” (Manual Steps).
- Remove OpenCandy suspicious from “Computer Start-up” (Manual Steps).
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Method 2- Automatic Removal Guide.
- Remove OpenCandy adware using “AdwCleaner” (Free).
- Remove OpenCandy Browser hijacker using “Junkware Removal Tool” (Free).
Final Step: Scan your computer with Good Anti-malwares.
- Remove OpenCandy virus using “Hitman-Pro” Anti-Malware (Free).
- Remove OpenCandy Infection using “Malwarebytes” Anti-Malware (Free).
STEP 1 : Uninstall OpenCandy from control panel
Uninstall OpenCandy browser hijacker from control panel which you have accidentally got installed recently. Uninstall recently installed unwanted & unknown programs as well.
Follow the below given instructions to uninstall it from control panel.
- Click on Start button –> click on Control Panel –> click on Add & Remove program or uninstall a program. You will get a window which have listed all the installed program on your computer.
- Uninstall OpenCandy program. (If OpenCandy won’t uninstall itself then use REVO Uninstaller Tool to remove it forcefully.) Click here to know more How to Uninstall any software with Revo Uninstaller Tool
(If you don’t see OpenCandy into installed program list, may be it has installed with another name. Anyway, do uninstall all other unwanted programs and skip this step, go to further steps.) - Uninstall all unwanted programs which have installed recently (you can short all them by the date using clicking on date column on uninstall page). We are giving you a list of suspicious program, If you got installed any on your computer so please uninstall all them immediately List here:- DownloadTerms 1.0, LyricsGet, BrowseToSave, TidyNetwork.com, SuperLyrics, and WebCake 3.0.
STEP 2 : Remove OpenCandy browser hijacker from browsers
Internet Explorer
1) Remove OpenCandy homepage from Internet Explorer.
- Open Internet Explorer.
- Click on Tools menu (Press F10 key to activate menu bar).
- Click on Internet Options.
- Click on General Tab.
- Remove OpenCandy homepage from there and set your homepage url as you want at startup.
2) Remove OpenCandy addons from Internet Explorer.
- Open Internet Explorer.
- Click on Tools menu (Press F10 key to activate menu bar.)
- Click on Manage Addons.
- In left side pane, click on Toolbars & Extensions.
- In right side pane, right-click on OpenCandy extension and click on disable / remove also disable all the unwanted extensions from there.
Click here to know more How to Remove Addons from Internet Explorer (Removal Guide).
3) Remove OpenCandy search engine from Internet Explorer.
- Open Internet Explorer.
- Click on Tools menu (Press F10 key to activate menu bar.)
- Click on Manage Addons.
- In left side pane, click on Search Provider.
- In right side pane, right-click on google and click on set as default
- Now remove OpenCandy extension from there and also remove all the unwanted addons.
If above three steps couldn’t remove OpenCandy then you have to remove it by resetting Internet Explorer.
Remove OpenCandy by retetting Internet Explorer (Restore IE to its Default Settings)
- Open Internet Explorer.
- Click on Tools menu (Press F10 key to activate menu bar.)
- Click on Internet Options.
- Click on Advanced Tab.
- Click on Reset Button.
- A confirmation dialog box will come up. Check mark the check-box “Delete Personal Settings”, then click Reset button on it.
Click here to know more How to Reset Internet Explorer as Default (Reset Guide).
Mozilla Firefox
1) Remove OpenCandy homepage from Mozilla Firefox.
- Open Firefox browser.
- Click on menu icon.
- Click on Options.
- Remove OpenCandy url from home page field and set the url as you want.
2) Remove OpenCandy add-ons from Mozilla Firefox.
- Open Firefox browser.
- Click on menu icon.
- Click on Addons.
- In left side pane, click on Extensions.
- In right side pane, select the OpenCandy extension and remove / disable it. Remove all the unwanted add-ons fromthere as well.
Click here to know more How to Remove Addons from Firefox (Addon Removal Guide).
3) Remove OpenCandy search engine from Mozilla Firefox.
- Open Firefox browser.
- Click on menu icon.
- Click on options.
- In left side pane, click on Search.
- In right side pane, go to “Default Search Engine” section and select google search engine as default search engine.
- Go to “One-Click Search Engines” section on the same page, select and remove OpenCandy from there.
Reset Mozilla Firefox (Restore to default setting)
- Open Firefox browser.
- Click on menu icon.
- Click on Help menu.
- Click on Troubleshooting Information.
- Click on Refresh Firefox button.
Click here to know more How to Reset Firefox as Default (Reset Guide).
Google Chrome
1) Remove OpenCandy homepage from Google Chrome.
- Open Google Chrome
- Click on menu icon
- Click on Settings
- Go to “On start-up” section of the settings page. Remove OpenCandy URL from there and add url as you want to open at startup.
2) Remove OpenCandy extension from Google Chrome
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click on menu icon.
- Click on “More Tools“
- Click on Extensions.
An extension settings page will open up where all the chrome’s extensions are listed. - Remove OpenCandy extension from there.
- Also remove all the other unwanted extensions you found there.
Click here to know more How to Remove Addons from Google Chrome (Addon Removal Guide).
3) Remove OpenCandy search engine from Google Chrome
- Open Google Chrome.
- Click on menu icon.
- Click on “Settings“
- Go to “Search Engine” section of the settings page.
- Set google as your default search engine.
- Click on “Manage Search Engines“
- Remove OpenCandy search engine from there.
Reset Google Chrome (Restore chome to its default settings)
- Open Google Chrome
- Click on menu icon
- Click on Settings
- Scroll down and click on “advanced” in the bottom of the page. After click on advanced you’ll get more options below.
- Scroll down more and go to “Reset and clean up” section. Now click on reset. It will ask you to reset chrome, click on reset button there.
Click here to know more How to Reset Google Chrome to Default Setting (Reset Guide).
STEP 3: Remove OpenCandy infection from “Windows Shortcuts” (Manually).
- Right click on the icon of Internet Explorer on desktop then select Properties option, you’ll get a small window, In that window, look on the target field, if you found “OpenCandy” string in this target field, please remove all the string related to OpenCandy.
(You may leave that step, if you don’t see this type of infection.)
- Repeat the same step with all the shortcuts of browsers (Firefox, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari) and from all the locations under Startmenu/Taskbar/Desktop etc.
STEP 4: Remove OpenCandy malicious program from “Registry” (Manually).
- Press Windows key + R key together on your keyboard, you’ll get a RUN box, Type Regedit on this RUN box and then click on OK button or hit enter key on your keyboard. You’ll get open a Registry Editor window.
- Before modifying registry, we have to take backup of whole registry. click on computer icon on the top of Registry Editor, then click on File menu and then click on Export, then Save that registry backup file with any name.
- Click on Edit menu and then click on Find, you’ll get a find box to find any string in registry.
- Type OpenCandy into find box, and click on Find Next button. if it found any entry with the name of OpenCandy in result, so please replace all them to Google, or you may remove them if you found suspicious.
STEP 5: Remove OpenCandy suspicious entries from “Computer Start-up” (Manually).
- Press Windows key + R key together on your keyboard, you’ll get a RUN box, type MSCONFIG into this RUN box and then click on OK button or hit enter key on your keyboard. You’ll get open a System Configuration window.
- Click on Services Tab, and un-check all the OpenCandy entries.
- Click on Startup Tab, and un-check all the OpenCandy entries.
- Then click on apply and then click on OK.
STEP 6: Remove OpenCandy Adware registry entries using “AdwCleaner” (Free).
- Download Adwcleaner.exe, click here to download : Adwcleaner.exe, and then Run it. An Adwcleaner application will be started, It have the 4 buttons Scan / Clean /Report / Uninstall.
- Click on “Scan” Button to start the scanning on your computer. After finished the scan, it will show you results, actually adwcleaner has been found all the Unwated Programs / Adwares on your computer and all these have been selected here. so please look on them once and Un-check the Items which you don’t want to remove (only selected items will be deleted when you click on “Clean” button).
- Now click on “Clean” button to remove all that selected items – then follow their on screen instruction to complete it.
- Now after all done, it will be asking for reboot your computer, so please allow it to reboot. After reboot, you will get a notepad open automatically when computer get started, this notepad will be listed all the logs.
- After reboot you will be got rid of OpenCandy from your computer.
STEP 7: Remove OpenCandy browser hijacker using “Junkware Removal Tool” (Free).
- Download Junkware Removal Tool, click here to download : Junkware Removal Tool, and then Run it.
- A “Junkware Removal Tool” application will be started with the command line screen. Here it is asking you that “press any key to continue” to start the scanning, so “press any key” on your keyword to start the scanning and fixing process.
- Now “Junkware Removal Tool” is scanning your computer, After finished the scan, it will automatically open a text file which have listed all the logs, you can close that text file after reading.
- Now please Reboot your computer.
- After reboot, you’ll get removed OpenCandy from your computer completely.
STEP 8: Remove OpenCandy virus using “Hitman-Pro” Anti-Malware (Free for 30days).
- Download Hitman Pro, click here to download : Hitman pro-32bit – Hitman pro-64bit, and then Install it.
- Start Hitman Pro program.
- Click on Next button to start the scanning process and then follow their on screen instructions to complete it.
STEP 9: Remove OpenCandy Infection using “Malwarebytes” Anti-Malware (Free).
- Download Malwarebytes, click here to download : Malwarebytes, and then install it on your computer.
(If you want to use it free for forever , so don’t select the check box named as “Enable free trial of malwarebytes Antimalware PRO” while installing). - Now Start Malwarebytes application.
- Now select option “Perform quick scan” then click on “Scan” button to run a scan on your computer.
- After finished the scan process, click on “Show Results” button.
- It will show you a results page, actually Malwarebytes has been found all the Adwares / Malware on your computer. so please select all the found items and then click on “Remove Selected” button.
(You can deselect the selected items if you don’t want to remove any- because only selected items will be deleted when you click on “Remove Selected” button). - Now please Reboot your computer.
- After reboot, you’ll get removed OpenCandy from your computer completely.