I'm afraid I am having less luck. I did everything you suggested in deleting search conduit from the registry. I even went further and then used the 'find next' to search and delete every file with the name search conduit - and yet the damn thing is still on all three browsers!

I also had to find "Conduit" by using the search bar in the Programs window, and it came up as one of the publishers. I already had gotten rid of all the programs with Conduit in the name, but this one had a different program name, so I did not find it until I used the search method. It was this last program that was causing the problem.

I had to remove the problem by opening the JS file named 'prefs' in notepad. Look for this in the file; user_pref("browser.newtab.url", "changethislinkhere"); And switch the search conduit link with the link you prefer to open in a new tab. Also check through this file, because there were many different links on my file for search conduit as well as a few others. Hope this helps! Had to create an account just to tell you how I fixed mine! :)

I managed to get rid of this menace pretty simply. Here's how:

1- Download "Junkware Removal Tool" (jrt.exe) from a safe source like Majorgeeks.com, then run it. It will get rid of SearchProtect, including the related registry entries.

2- In Firefox, go to about:config and search for "conduit".

3- Change the two entries for home page and new tab to your preference (FWIW, I use google.com).

That's it.

Also, if you're going to manually remove a program, rather than doing it in "Programs and Features", I strongly recommend using "Revo Unistaller", as it does a very thorough job of cleaning up files, folders and registry entries.

That's quite easy to get rid of conduit redirect virus if you have some computer knowledge and follow this removal guide

Do we know who owns this malware? am assuming it is conduit.com who pass themselves off as a credible business. Has anybody approached them or am I just being naive?

I don't mean to be rude, but yes, you're being naive. These people operate what they consider to be a legitimate business, even if what they do is a major annoyance to people who are "infected" with their crapware. It's not malicious in that it doesn't steal your personal information or do anything else that's criminal. These people suck, no doubt, but you're not going convince them that they're wrong or get them to stop doing it.

OK thanks. Will try your suggestions about removing this stuff

First thing: for anyone who never worked in the Registry (like me), read the tutorial from raw.sock (9th or 10th post) way at the beginning, and most of your problem is solved. Unfortunately, it seems as though you have to get rid of whatever program you downloaded, that "conduit" hitched a ride on. Just getting rid of Conduit won't solve it - the minute you reload firefox, it just comes up again. In my case, I KNEW it was a program called Foxit (a pdf editor). I uninstalled it, along with a 2nd program that had been installed (Foxit Cloud), went back into the HKEY CURRENT USER setting, and deleted Foxit from the Registry, in the same way raw.sock describes. Firefox is now working OK. If you don't know which program you downloaded, you might just have to delete them one at a time. Hope this helps.

1. This conduit hijacking software was in neither my programs and features, nor was it in the Firefox add-ons. But every time I started firefox, the home page was the Conduit page. Easily enough fixed by simply changing the home page properties in "tools/options" menu.

2. When a new tab was opened, it showed a conduit page. Bad enough but it had an ad for Dr.Oz facecream or something, with a picture of Ellen DeGeneres' mug staring at me! She's cute and all, but...

The fix for this is simple also:

 - Type  about:config  in the address bar.
 - In the search bar presented, type "conduit"
 - You will now see a list of all the conduit hijacks.
 - look for the  BROWSER.NEWTAB.URL line - click it and change the string properties to a web page of your choice. EG  http://google.aqk.ca/  (my favourite!)

  There are some other entries with Conduit in them- I'm not sure how they affect your Firefox yet.  If in doubt about them, just change the word "conduit" to zzonduit and see if it all still runs OK. 

Oh yeah- Run Malwarebytes or a similarly WIDELY-APPROVED hijack cleaner. Be careful- there are some anti-virus/anti-hijack programs out there that will clean, BUT they install THEIR OWN HOOKS, and then ask you to pay them or else!

The program does not show up in either the Programs and Features nor in Revo Uninstaller, hence, there was nothing I could delete.

This conduit is very foxy and can hide its existence in Control Panel so as to avoid being deleted.

If that's the case, the program is probably gone, but you need to go to about:config and edit the home and new tab settings. As I explained above, searching for "conduit" will display the settings that you need to change.

Set browser.startup.homepage to whatever site you want as your home page.

Set browser.newtab.url to about:newtab.

Tried several of the suggestions above to remove search.conduit from the Firefox browser but only found marginal success. The instructions above helped in uninstalling the .exe and removing a few icons.

Left to my on devices, I reviewed the Firefox "Help". There I found the option to to "Restart with Ad-ons Disabled". Running this I got a warning first. Then the dialog box indicated that a number of functions would continue to operate without disruption. I confirmed the task to execute and Firefox restarted and appeared as new. My toolbar, taskbar, and bookmarks remained intact.

I had to reset my Home page in the General Options area again and all was well again!

This worked for me, good look.

I found in Chrome that you can manage the TABS by which one you want shown. I deselected the search.conduit. I opened and closed CHROME 3 times already and it doesn't come up anymore. Hopefully the other computers I tend to will sync with what I did in CHROME. I am going to also see if the tabs will do the same thing in Mozilla Firefox and IE.

Hope this helps.

The other option is to go to your computers toolbar on the bottom right and find search protect. (Small blue shield with a magnifying glass) If you go into it you can change the settings back to google, or what ever you want. This will then ironically stop any other profgrams changing your search settings.

All I did was opened up the options on how you want your browser to open. It gives the tabs that will open. You deselect the SEARCH.CONDUIT. Headache over.