While helping someone with their computer, I ran into a problem: the browser’s homepage was hijacked to hao123. After changing the homepage it would get changed back. I used Tencent PC Manager and 360 Safeguard to lock the homepage; the set homepage was ours and clicking the home button went to our set homepage, but the first screen on launch wasn’t our homepage — it was hao123. I even edited the registry manually, still to no effect. I fussed for most of the day, ran antivirus, cleaned up plugins; both PC Manager and 360 Safeguard reported a clean health check.
In the end I found the culprit behind it all: the Kuaibo (QVOD) 3.5 no-update version. After fully uninstalling it, things returned to normal and the homepage went back to the URL we had set.
I imagine many guys have Kuaibo installed, but the higher versions are “not as good” — note the quotes, you know what I mean — so most people picked the classic Kuaibo 3.5, the never-update version.
I suspect the version everyone downloaded isn’t the official original, because it’s too rogue. After installation the browser homepage gets hijacked, and I still don’t know how to fix it. Neither 360 Safeguard nor Tencent’s security manager could do anything about it; manually editing the registry didn’t work either. I’ve already reported it to Tencent’s security manager, hoping they find a fix. For now the only solution is to uninstall Kuaibo 3.5 no-update version, or you put up with hao123 as your permanent homepage.