What is sp.exe? Is sp.exe spyware or a virus?

What are you to do to fix sp.exe related problems?
1. Run Security Task Manager to check your sp.exe process
2. Run Registry Booster to fix sp.exe related errors
3. Run Spyware Doctor to remove persistent malware

Process name: ntsearch Adware BHO
Product: Cool Web Search
Company: ntsearch
File: sp.exe
Security Rating:

InternetExplorer users get hijacked to www.ntsearch.com. Solution: Put the process into quaratine using Security Task Manager.

If you can not remove sp.exe (because you can not locate it, or it is in use), download Security Task Manager. This program can kill the process, delete or quarantine this file, or just list all security related information about this file and all other running background processes.


Users Opinions

128 users ask for this file. 15 users didn't rate it ("don't know"). 6 users rated it as not dangerous. 1 user rated it as not so dangerous. 19 users rated it as neutral. 34 users rated it as little bit dangerous. 68 users rated it as dangerous.


All comments about sp.exe:
Niki durch Trojaner eingeschleppter Prozesse; IE linkt auf www.ntsearch.com  See also: Link
lässt sich löschen, nachdem man mit dem Security Taskmanager den prozess "sp.exe" beendet hat
G.H. Can annoy IE6 as it install itself with the toolbar, and IE won't function properly with certain sites. (Screen turns into gray)
Peter Tavinor it blocks Panda Virus Scan, Panda's online scan is below  See also: Link
Simon Halcrow I believe it to be a form of spyware. more of a pain in the arse for hotmail users if anything. remove in safe mode, by searching win dir and registry.
KKWW problems with hotmail
seems to be linked with browser hijacking malware.
Joe  See also: Link
Ben alamio spyware , cant surf with him when he run on the local computer make 100% cpu too  See also: Link
jesus el mcaffe lo detecta como adware potencialmente peligroso y dice q es un programa  See also: Link
 See also: Link
Un pobre usuario pedorro es una mierda, que no te deja ver hotmail ni otras paginas, y te caga media vida
el_bibiq I found in my root (C:\ that is) on W2k. G.H. is right, screen does turn gray on mail.com and operamail.com. I killed the process and deleted the sp.exe and no problemo since.
Zyklone It make IE pages white and seems too be memory resistent. It can be removed with HijackThis but the next day it´s back again. Placed in root of C: drive.
Francis Kwang It refreshes your IE browser and shows a blank page and gives a lot of Page Not Found error on random sites
Alejandro the file may get lost some programs when their are runnig, because the windows that it open interrup the conection of those programs
dave it take control over you ( I think its illigal spware that do anything without your awareness, and I think it have something to do with Netsearch
Xammer It can't be deleted, it was created when I was surfing on the Internet, it is annoying and I hate it!
Jorge es un archivo introducido por hijackers que intenta descargar programas espias al entrar a ciertas páginas como hotmail, hay que borrarlo desabilitando restaurar sistema  See also: Link
Tito Lívio complementar ao comentario anterior: para elimina-lo vá ao gerenciador de tarefas do win e finalize o processo. Vá a pesquisar e ache todos os arquivos que ele cria. Delete todos. Se o "sp.exe" não quiser ser eliminado volte ao gerenciador do win (guia processos) e torne a encerrar o processo. Volte ao win explore e delete-o. O norton detectou mas não eliminou. Também é bom observar se pressionando ALT+TAB aparece uma janelinha em branco. É sinal de que o sp.exe esta presente.
George kakabadze I've just discovered it, it is located on the path C:\sp.exe, on my comp, and is every second refering to Hard Disk. Reading files "~CLBCATQ.DLL" located in system32 folder and also the file shdocvw.dll. Also hi has opened handle for ksecdd.sys service. this is a security service and why it needs it, if the sp is neutral, than?. timer, security, and resident == NOT neutral
albert un detector de spyware me lo detecto, ademas deke sospechamente staba abierto en los procesos!!! nose bien ke era pero lo kite y mi pc anda mejor!!  See also: Link
snake nothing but the system is sure slow and a pop up shows after i enter my videos folder an error msg
Yang definately virus like. it makes IE closed automatically
KM Makes your IE6 unable to show frames in HTML.
Grania It file very dangerous.
Sladjan spyware that causes damage to IE
Y spybot says it's a spyware
pluto link to ntsearch.com site. Very annoying and problem in accessing emails
Theresa Willerup It completely messes up my Internet Explorer, and Powerpoint and Outlook also seem to be affected
Sphinx Disturbing Internet explorer
jehad batal this file causes a problem to your browser every time you try to open a page the browser turns the charecters in your page into question marks and doesnt allow you to surf safely. what you need to do is to go and check in your registry and search for the file and delete it evey think will be back to normal then
greg bennett attacks secure site certificates, remove it from startup and delete the file immediately
Annoyed Turn some website into white or gray with IE6 and "invent" hyperlinks with some words like money, web, news etc...
ever_net this file block hotmail pages. can not access to check mails and block internet explorer closing all.  See also: Link
Geoff_s Spyware or trojan - It usually installs to C:\sp.exe, doesnt bring up any icon which is sneaky. Also will not let you delete it as it is running as a service. Hit cntrl alt delete and stop the service / end now and then you can delete it. I think spybot can block it but did not remove the .exe, I had to do this manually. It has gotten so bad on the net lately, I find myself running spybot and ad aware every few days. The most innocent sites can have this crap.
hobiecat Virus: blank page with frame IE6. Avast didn't see anything. you must stop process sp.exe and kill in boot and in register.
pravin it gives continuous popup "IE ERROR"
Marius van Wyk when it 'infects' your computer, you get a 'operation aborted' error and some sites cannot be accessed
spen I had it on my puter an couldnt get rid..puter slowed down an acted very weird I believe its a virus..stop it by "end task" in "running processes" then find location in your puter an delete it!!
Joe Lacuñada Afecta a Outlook y genera un mensaje de error en Windows XP al tratar de chatear o abrir una pàgina
pp it blocking site that have a security
Overkill_Brasil Work like a virus when is active, block the acess to the e-mail settings, and sometimes close all IE operations. To finish your activity, you have to close it in Task Manager, but remove it from system I don´t know (try deleting from registry).
it comes in with imesh (when started) then tries to take over computer when running some programs
Thomas It makes my disk where AVG is installed unreachable!!
Jon Buxton We had it on two of our machines. As has been said it resides as c:\sp.exe. Use task manager to stop the process, then delete it. Do a search for NTSearch and unistall that. You will have to do a download to uninstall NTSearch, don't worry it does not put something else on your machine in its place. Good luck all.
maanu i had it on my computer and does not allow my ie to open frames, also redirect search to ntsearch.com
Luthien makes links from words like money, cash, net, web, etc and makes it absolutely impossible to use hotmail.
einna vallekana afecta al iexplorer y al rendimiento del ordenador haciendo que vaya mas lento. y no te cuento como va outlook de tortuga!! da gusto
wakko block hotmail pages and changes the way you see other pages, is located at C:\, just remove it from startup and delete it
GTZ Dit SpyWare programma maakt het onmogelijk om op Girotel Zakelijk Online in te loggen.  See also: Link
Carlos Its spyware
Santi Pone hipervínculos a ciertas palabras (mail, etc) y borra ciertas páginas que requieren contraseña.
Gilla delete its reference in registry and in windows\prefetch, then reboot and erase sp.exe under system root directory (usually C:)
JonP searching for more info about this fella. Hijacks web page and does not allow java to run. About 5 PC hit in the organisation i work for. Manually stop service, remove from registry startup, and then delete file.
santosh. View source did not work for me from ie, and 2 ie process was running all the time and was not able to kill the ie process too. Its very annoying
Mr J Annoying little bugger... As temporary solution just end the process in Task Manager. It stops the problems with some sites temporarily!
Norman ese archivo no lo detectaba mi antivirus pero si molestaba porque creo que todas las paginas al entrar duraban un segundo y desaparecia quedando en blanco. Igual me meti a procesos y se me hizo raro ver el archivo y pos lo quite, igual en el regedit estaba el maldito
MaD Blocks internet Connection
F Trevino won´t let you open some websites. Check symantec website to remove this file.  See also: Link
iCQ Drives me crazy
Compression What a pain, screw my wifes system daily. Search Registry for sp.exe and delete. Also search and destry gp.exe, gp2.exe, pout.exe and pin.exe this is a rehash of an old bastard virus. To search registry just type regedit in the the run box when it pops press ctrl and f to search and f3 key to find the next incident.
AMIGO NEUTAL HOTMAIL x SIEMPRE Es un ejecutable, el cual hace que algunas paginas del Internet no se muestren y en especial las relacionadas con Hotmail, "ES UN DOLOR DE CABEZA", la solucion es Fácil y Rápida...  See also: Link
ERNIE it totally block the entire internet session, some downloads and public and personal pages as mails it doesnt let them open, been trying to delete but it has been imposible. HELP¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡
Giulio Cesare CLOSING THE SP.EXE PROCESS let you view the java sites.
Robinb SP.exe as the main file. Blocks/changes/currupts internet pages. Hard to uninstall - Ad-aware can remove it as a temp measure, but it does come back. May cause pop-ups but this could be unrelated. Linked to NTsearch by finding key words and puts it into the search engine. More annoying then dangerous.
markgusto I found the process as sp.exe in the root drive of drive C: I deleted it from the drive, and from the registry. problem was resolved. :-)
Micke Sundqvist As it´s been said earlier, it turns the screen grey or white in certain sites. It is easy to clean with the programme "hijackthis". just look for the reg entry that ends with sp.exe and delete it  See also: Link Link
Joe Stupid Adware, the government should sue ntsearch.com!
Epson Smart Panel
Saulyo Este archivo blockea al internet explorer y no deja usar ni el correo web de hotmail ni de yahoo.
Christof Destroy's your computer's abilty to think or use hotmail
Katherine has the following files in it, Dc2.exe and A0016151.exe. Trendmicro says it is TROJ_Spooner.b  See also: Link
skagway It closes several running applications, like RegEdit, Ad-Aware and Office applications. Surfing the Internet brings up several pop-up windows, such as mobile ring-tones, on-line gambling, making-money sites. Sometime you cannot surf certain sites, like italian portal Tiscali. Deleting this file (in c:\) isn't enough, must search in registry or services. IT novices could be in serious difficulty.
chrissie chris not detected by avg, try to delete the executable c:\sp.exe, if you cant delete it from windows, go to the command prompt and delete it there. the file has not caused any damage to my computer, only some worries on how it got onto my drive.
×÷·.·´¯`· MERLIN ·´¯`·.·÷× EL SP.EXE NO ME DA NINGUNO DE ESOS PROBLEMAS PUEDO ABRIR TODO SIN NINGUN PROBLEMA
Sadiq Solkar this file too much painc , block , like adware.
Yngve I get problems with some sites on internet.
Annoyed This is very annoying, My spy-ware and anti virus couldn't find it. In the end I stopped it running by going to Ctrl, Alt & Delete, then doing a search for all .exe on my hard drive and it came up on my route, I deleted it from there. Hopefully it will stay gone.
maddox rox its not that dangerous, just annoying, and any page with minor script errors completely dies. open regedit.exe and search for then delete any reference to sp.exe and also, it stores itself in your temp folder, and temporary internet files. so delete those too. (its a good idea to clear them out anyway, they mostly just waste space)
DeaTH I removed it by using STM, but it wasn't easy
Rastanearian Use msconfig to prevent it running at start up. then delete it from C:\ and all will be well.
Martin Crescimo I wanted to thank you guys for the info. ntsearch is *** s***. Don´t use it
Khalid I found 3 results of this file (sp.exe) have deleted all, and I really purprised when I found a link as a "value" in my regedit, it's: ms-its:mhtml:file://C:\foo.mht!http://www.free32.com/POP.CHM::/sp.exe , do not click/compy paste it into your web browser!! , maybe it's the link which we first time we got the file from , cheak : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Code Store Database/Distribution Unites/HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Code Store Database\Distribution Units\{10000000-1000-0000-1000-000000000000}/Downloadinformation/CODEBASE then cheak the file value
Alex T Will use tons of CPU cylces and display popup ie errors every couple of seconds. Logs key entries too. Very nasty spyware.
Steve Churchman SP.EXE stopped access to many webpages including this one. Ctrl, Alt Del allows you to end program, then can delete it using Windows Explorer. Also noted Norton and No adware looked straight through the program until I disabled it and put itin the trashcan. Then and only then did Norton Antivirus recognise it as Adware software. I am now having problems updating Norton Antivirus using the live update facility
Manila Thanks for the info about that sp.exe. I was wondering why my internet explorer can't open some pages and I couldn't delete that Adware for the first time but I deleted it by using windows task manager
Epson Smart Panel
TArek very bad, run the safe mode, and then run the AV, and all the army of spysweeper u have , it should do the trick
sunil madkar It refreshes your Internet explorer browser and shows a blank page and gives a lot of Page Not Found error on random sites
Theresa Was downloaded onto computer even with firewall on, but i discovered it almost right away. Causes huge problem with IE as it displays grey screens and turns random words into search links. Remove by killing the process in Task Manager (ctrl+alt+del), then delete sp.exe in c:. Also delete a related file named sp-xxxxxxx.pf under C:\WINDOWS\Prefetch. xxxxxxx are random numbers. If you can't find the files, search on the computer by typing in sp.exe. good luck.
bob Annoying, potentionally dangerous, but easy to remove
Naoe Ney Very annoying, you get links to www.netserach.com on every site you visit with your IE, can be removed with spybot.
Poynting Daña el Internet Explorer. Las paginas se abren en blanco.
All what is said above, plus that it uses most of you cpu after the computer has been turned on for a while.
3vil it does nothing, it just sat there in my C drive doing nothing
Not so dangerous but very hard-to-die;5 different AV and Adware programs haven't been able to delete it definitely.
lululuminea Trojan.Win32.spooner.f in HKCU und unter C:-entführt auf NTSEARCH,lädt Seiten nicht und lässt Compi abstürzen.zu säubern mit HIJACKTHIS in dt/engl. Der Internet Explorer ist ein Sicherheitsrisiko,auch bei höchster Sicherheitsstufe.Trojaner ist als BHO (Browser Helper Object) getarnt. Das passiert bei aktuellen Browsern, wie MozillaFirefox u.a.nicht  See also: Link
Eddie It prevents you from "mark message as read" in yahoo mail, and annoys the hell out of browsing hotmail.Sometimes if you cut and paste text from a website it puts embedded ntsearch links in it.
mo there is a virus trying to access the computer when opening this page. (HTML script virus HTML/Exploit.Mhtml)
Spyware. It hijack ie, links 2 page you don't want. slow your computer down. Even spyware doctor can't delete it from my computer.
Ganesh In my PC it is in c:\ and in registry.To remove this delete the sp.exe c:\ and in registry "hkey current user\software\microsoft\windows\current version\run".
I have had it a couple of times.. and it is not always true that you can clean out your temp files and run spybot adaware and change your redgedit and get rid of it you my have to surch for the deployer program. wich can be placed almost any were on you comp try searching the rundll32 file first though
ThunderstrucK i dont know what it is but i see it is very dangerous, i wasnt able to remove that bastard i had to rewrite windows, at the end it has blocked norton, pop-up blocker, and it was always putting stupid popup on my desktop. my pc worked so slow that i couldnt play any games or use applications.
rob creates tonnes of other files while ur surfin. It pisses me of because u cant really trust ur pc while ur having this sp.exe in ur system... There's a link here which tells u about hijackthis, but it's in french.  See also: Link
Al I obtained it when spelled google.com wrong. Site autoloads it. Also connects to about:blank adware which changes your homepage.
Its easy to remove. Open the Windows Task Manager and click Processes tab. Find sp.exe and click 'End Process'. Delete the sp.exe from c:\
James Morgan Scott, Jr. It pops up at various times, causes Internet explorer symbol to show up over 20 times as all running at same time then locks up the computer. When I start up in Safe Mode then go to msconfig to get to startup I remove the check on the file sp so it can not appear at startup. I then use Zone Alarm firewall at startup. This seems to allow me to use the computer and internet for a long time without problems, But the next time I use the computer the sp file is already placed with a check so that it loads at startup..
Olaf have been trying for three months to get rid of it. can identify it, delete the se.dll file, delete related log files, but it always returns. it's the startup file sp that I cannot find and destroy.
Wayne Remains resident after cleansing, although not necesserily active. Hey - whoever wrote this piece of shit code; the same WILL happen to you and I hope you get well fucked. Period.
Mausau2000 That spybot can stop it. go to start up list then stop it. (sturn on teatimer first.don't let it change any registy entry  See also: Link
Faux Causes frequent system hangs, easy to delete from safe-mode.
mausau2000 Pop ups all over the place
ben err, just put XP on computer, (upgrade from 98). when i was on 98, it crashed every three hours, and made computer run really slow
just a message from winXP when i shut down the PC... didn't bother me when on- or offline, maybe because i don't use IE or any other microsoft-program besides XP ?!?
RAT Hat bei mir nicht nur immer auf ntsearch verlinkt, sondern auch das Internet komplett abgeschaltet!
Den I have found at myself. Has found the information on it on http://www.dbvirus.com/, and their antivirus all has cured!  See also: Link

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Is sp.exe spyware or a virus, trojans, adware or worm? Is there a known sp.exe error?


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