Browser Starts Randomly

[jrdoner]

Hello,

I've not been on this forum before, but I've never had this knotty a problem before. I bought a MacBook Pro, used, but in very good condition. It worked fine for several months, then suddenly, the browser would randomly open and bring up a page with a URL "hangouts.google.com..."; always the same URL. I have convinced myself that the browser is not the culprit, for several reasons:

1. happens with every browser;
2. I deleted all the browser profiles, and it still came back, magically reappearing in the browser profile.

So it looks like some process that's running is doing this, but the Activity Monitor shows about 50 running processes. Does anybody have any ideas as to how I locate this cultprit, or does anybody know how to shut down the running processes? If I could do that, I'd eventually find the evil process that's doing this.

Thanks in advance for any insights.

 

[honestone]

First, we need to know the following:

1. What specific MacBook Pro model you have.
2. What exact OS version are you using?
3. Have you been making any kind of backups?
4. Have you installed any potentially "problematic" software on your machine? MacKeeper is the worst of the worst, but there are others.

For Activity Monitor, it's difficult to discover "rogue" processes, as so many of them are system related (and most likely valid/ok).

 

[jrdoner]

Running MacBook Pro Retina OS 10.10.3 (tried El Capitan, went back);
As for backups, I have a Time Capsule, so I could go back, but that would be difficult because of other things that I've done since this started.

This machine is used for productivity, so I have some programming tools, but I've used them for years, and they are not suspect.

In addition, the virus/malware scanner detects nothing amiss.

 

[honestone]

The last version of Yosemite is/was 10.10.5, so you first might want to upgrade to it.

Also, it might be good if you do some maintenance first on your current system, along with doing a backup/clone of your system. I have to get going, but here is a post I just did for someone else that is similar (the link to the thread is listed; my post is the (current) last one:

https://www.mac-help.com/threads/help-me-factory-restore-my-macbook.221201/#post-1536088