ItsGeekToMe.co

Q: How to get rid of BrowseFox.m

– Mike O.
Freeport, Florida

A: You know, I receive a lot of e-mail, with a lot of reader questions in them. If I had to guess, I’d say that I immediately place almost half of them in my “Can’t Use” folder because the author has written something that is so wordy that it would take nearly all of the space in my column just to print the question. Your question, Mike (if it is indeed a question) is pretty much the opposite, and at only six words, sets a new IGTM record for the shortest reader communication I’ve ever published. My answer, however, will be a little longer, for the benefit of my readers who don’t speak “breviloquent”.

The item Mike is asking about is a specific malware infection, in this case a Browser Helper Object, or BHO. In order to track infestations, the anti-malware community assigns names to each new virus, Trojan, worm, etc. as it is discovered. Generically, BrowseFox can pop-up seemingly out of nowhere, because of the way it is propagated. It spreads mostly through freeware and shareware downloads. It is capable of infesting most browsers, including IE, Chrome, Firefox, and others. Once installed, it begins to display a variety of 3^rd-party ads hawking goods, services, and coupons (as if web pages themselves didn’t already contain enough ads). There are rumors that BHOs such as BrowseFox can also make various changes to your system configuration, such as changing your home page, default search engine, and causing a general system slow-down. No fun!

The steps to remove BrowseFox are lengthy, and may differ depending on the browser you use. So, rather than try and cram them into my column, I’ll refer you to a nice website that contains all the info you’ll need to clean this little nasty off your computer. Just visit tinyurl.com/IGTM-0453A and follow the instructions.

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 Q: Windows 10 store app disappeared from task bar. Also will not load. Have any ideas?

 – Bob D.
An e-mail address is not a city and State, Bob

A: Your question is not as short as Mike’s, but not bad, Bob – not bad at all. I can work with this. And yes, of course I have “any ideas”, but let’s stick with answering your question for now, okay?

The Windows App store is Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s online store that helped to make iDevices so outrageously popular. Online shareware sites took us poor users from the days of slogging down to the software store at the mall to being able to download software directly from the comfort of our keyboards. However, there was always the danger of getting something other than what you bargained for, in the form of malware. App Stores generally fixed that by creating a safe haven where only software that has been vetted to a certain standard can be put up for download. The system isn’t perfect; after all, nobody has time to go through all of the features of every possible application to gain a comprehensive understanding of its net effect on a given computer. But it goes a long way to solving the problem. If and when issues are found, the offending application can be quickly identified, isolated, and either replaced, or simply removed from distribution.

Windows 10 brought us the Microsoft App Store as an integrated part of the operating system. It’s important, and very frustrating when it happens to go missing – especially when the fault lies with Microsoft’s own security or software updates, as has happened on several occasions. Fortunately, and unlike several other widespread issues plaguing Windows users (thanks, Bill!) Microsoft has been proactive to providing a fix for this problem. As usual, the steps are somewhat involved, and require you to perform a download from Microsoft and some steps that need elevated system privileges. The actual description is too detailed for me to publish, but here’s a link to a page that should help you regain your App Store access: tinyurl.com/IGTM-0453B