"protected by reCAPTCHA" message in browser at PC startup

Question

Starting yesterday, right after starting my Windows 10 PC I see that some process has opened two tabs in Google Chrome with the following URL and message:

https://www.recaptcha.net/recaptcha/api2/anchor?ar=1&k=6LcXnG8cAAAAAMdaeQXuMG01hTwMaFO5V3VlS354&co=aHR0cHM6Ly9sb2dpbi5nb2cuY29tOjQ0Mw..&hl=en&v=-TriQeni1Ls-Mdq_ssN2cUL5&size=invisible&cb=h2s63l1gv2zl

Is anyone else experiencing this? Any suggestions for how to detect the service that is causing this would be hugely appreciated. So far, my anti-virus go-to tools (Microsoft built-in threat detection, and Hitman Pro) have not been able to remove whatever causes these.

I'm running Windows 10 21H1 (OS Build 19043.1266)

Thanks so much!

Answer 1

I had the same issue, apparently caused by MinerGate uninstall registry leftovers... In the task manager in startup I had an app called "Program" but it was not possible to open the location.

If you select in the header of startup manager the "Startup type" and "command line" view you will see what cause this, and in my case it was this old app I installed once to see what it was about ages ago.

I don't understand why it behaved this way suddenly (I hope it wasn't a malware afterall). After deleting all the related keys in the registry it solved my problem, and this "Program" doesn't appear anymore in my startup list.