Q. How do I get rid of Babylon search in my browser?

Posted on August 15, 2012 by quill

Babylon is a search “aid” for web browsers and a toolbar; it is a rogue search engine redirector.  It resists attempts to uninstall it.  Do NOT go to the Babylon site and use their uninstaller, it leaves code on your machine.

Firefox:

Go to Manage Search Engines in Firefox and remove any entries for Babylon

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/search-bar-easily-choose-your-search-engine

Check if you have Babylon Toolbar in your Firefox menu > Add Ons and remove any items for Babylon. Check both the Plug ins tab and the Extensions tab (on older versions, Tools >  Add-ons).

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-or-remove-add-ons

Set the Home page to the search engine of your choice (the default Google search entry is http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q= )

http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/How%20to%20set%20the%20home%20page?s=Set+home+page&r=1&as=s

Remove Babylon from the search engine default for unrecognized pages

  1. In the address bar enter “about:config” and hit Enter
  2. Bypass the warranty screen(s) by clicking
  3. On the next screen enter “Babylon” in the Filter window (a search in the config)
  4. You will find approx a half dozen places where Babylon shows up.
  5. Highlight each of these entries one at a time, right click and choose “reset”.
  6. When finished.close the file.
Chrome 
  1. Click on the wrench icon in the Google Chrome address bar and from the drop down menu select Settings > Extensions or Tools > Extensions — depending on your version
    (or enter chrome://settings/extensions in the location bar)
  2. Check if any items of Babylon Toolbar or Babylon Chrome OCR are listed in the browser Extensions. If the Click on uninstall to remove the toolbar(s) from the browser.
  3. Close the window. Choose the wrench icon again and depending on your version choose Settings > Settings or Options from the drop down menu.
  4. Check the Home Page setting under Basics to see if Babylon is listed. Replace it with another search engine that you want to use for your home page.
  5. Click Manage search engines, check if Babylon is listed on the page. Hover your mouse overan Babylon entries, click the X icon to uninstall it. Go back to the previous page and pick another available search engine as the default browser search engine.
  6. Check the On Start Up entry in Settings, click on Go to a specific page… and enter http://www.Google.com  or your preferred search engine.

Internet Explorer

If you don’t have any preferences and settings in Internet Explorer that you particularly want to keep, you can do a reset of the IE Settings http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/browser-hijacking.aspx

Otherwise you can remove it manually

Delete the Babylon Toolbar

  1. Open Internet Explorer and click on “Tools”.
  2. Select “Manage Add Ons”,  search for the Babylon Toolbar in the list of add-ons.
  3. Right Click on the Babylon Toolbar and select “disable”.
  4. Click on “Ok” and restart Internet Explorer.

Restore your home page to the one you want

http://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/homepagerestore.aspx

Remove Babylon from the search engine default for unrecognized pages (note this requires editing your Registry. Back it up first.  If you are not confident, refer the work to someone experienced)

  1. Open “RegEdit” through the launch menu.
  2. Find this entry
  3. HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\About URLs\Tabs
  4. Change the entry that points to Babylon search, to the search engine you want (Google for example).

After removing and resetting, I would recommend starting in Safe mode (F8) and running Malwarebytes or SuperAntiSpyware to check the machine and registry.  Running CCleaner to clean the registry wouldn’t hurt.  Then test your browser(s) by opening them and typing in some nonsense in the URL/location bar to make sure the defaults have been successfully changed.

 

You may have the Babylon Uninstaller still remaining on your machine

Go to C:\Program Files\ and delete any folder related to Babylon
Go to C:\Program Files (X86) and delete any folder related to Babylon

Restart the machine in Safe Mode (F8) and run CCleaner

  1. Open CCleaner,
  2. Click Tools,
  3. Select Babylon toolbar from the list,
  4. Click Uninstall.
  5. Run the Registry tool,
  6. Run the cleaner.

YouTube video tutorials on removing Babylon

Manual removal of files: Search your computer for these files

  • Temp%\1829391B-BAB0-7891-A172-248E6F142BCD\Latest\bab033.tbinst.dat
  • %Temp%\1829391B-BAB0-7891-A172-248E6F142BCD\Latest\BabylonObjectInstaller.bao
  • %Temp%\1829391B-BAB0-7891-A172-248E6F142BCD\Latest\BabylonObjectInstaller.inf
  • %Temp%\1829391B-BAB0-7891-A172-248E6F142BCD\Latest\BabylonTB.xpi
  • %Temp%\1829391B-BAB0-7891-A172-248E6F142BCD\Latest\BExternal.dll
  • %Temp%\1829391B-BAB0-7891-A172-248E6F142BCD\Latest\MyBabylonTB.exe
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