Hi Essexboy,
Done that via configuration panel. It was OTS’s doing, now all is fine. The browser hijacker toolbars etc (Conduit Engine Findbar & Softonic-Eng7-Findbar) have gone) the empty entries are still in explorer bars. Maybe have to reset IE for that.
All this started with the downloader for the pcpick software from here hxtp://ab623c63-download.picpick.org/picpick_inst.exe
The program was OK, only the installer came packed with the additional Softonic “goodies”, which can be problematic as we experienced and are certainly PUP BHO’s and adware-malware. Did a resetting and cleansing of Firefox and reset to default settings. The browser hijacker is installed in both IE and Firefox. Flock browser is not affected.
Only the empty toolbar names are still in IE explorer bar, but empty and void…
Funny was when I ran the OTS script the first time, part of the script had run and the desktop went all black, the first part of the script went in a jiffy, the Conduit Engine delete part hung for quite some time and would not go, I then restarted and on running OTS with the same script for the third time all was cleansed like you predicted. I could have had been warned when I installed the installer for picpick because avast would only let it run in the avast 6 sandbox, but as I have this software for years and never a problem with this free program, I was not expecting the developers made some deal with a crap launcher like Softonic. Anyways glad I am rid of it on my comp, and a good warning for all the other boys and gals here on the forums not to use such a kind of installer.
So folks, if avast alerts and wants to run something only through the sandbox, first come here for advice, that is the lesson learnt, because then something “fishy” is happening,
polonus
P.S. Also see these two ThreatExpert reports for this kind of crapware:
http://www.threatexpert.com/report.aspx?md5=e269b52a679e9cc07c5441a5bd78097b
and more recently this one:
http://www.threatexpert.com/report.aspx?md5=e7222762a4b5a8ea1b31c992362ea474
D