subject: Remove Advanced Virus Remover and Other Rogue or Fake Antivirus Malware [print this page] Remove Advanced Virus Remover and Other Rogue or Fake Antivirus Malware
Have you installed Advanced Virus Remover? Do you find it becomes pretty terrible once you install it...you will find you can do almost everything...like use task manager, Safe Mode, or even install a real malware removal tool! Actually Advanced Virus Remover is one of many fake antivirus applications like Antivirus Live or Internet Security 2010, which are really just rogue viruses that hold your computer hostage until you pay the ransom money. They tell you that your PC is infected with loads of viruses, even though it's the only virus on your computer. Today we will take a look at how to remove Advanced Virus Remover and even other rogue or fake antivirus malware.
Terror of Advanced Virus Remover
This is what covers your PC with messages about viruses that they claim you have.
What's worse, there are popups, messages, and just dozens of windows that open.
In fact, their goal is to get you to pay them.
Advanced Virus Remover is tricky. If you open an application more than once, it'll block you from opening it again, preventing you from installing any anti-malware tools. It also changes your wallpaper.
What makes you angry is that Advanced Virus Remover prohibits you from heading into Safe Mode where you at least might have a better chance of getting rid of it.
General Guide: Removing Rogue Fake Antivirus Infections
There's a couple of steps that you can generally follow to get rid of the majority of rogue antivirus infections, and actually most malware or spyware infections of any type. Here's the quick steps:
- Try to use the free and portable version of SUPERAntiSpyware to remove the viruses.
- If that doesn't work, reboot your PC into safe mode with networking (use F8 right before Windows starts to load)
- Try to use the free and portable version of SUPERAntiSpyware to remove the viruses.
- Reboot your PC and go back into safe mode with networking.
- If that doesn't work, and safe mode is blocked, try running ComboFix. Note that I've not yet had to resort to this, but some of our readers have.
- Install MalwareBytes and run it, doing a full system scan. .
- Reboot your PC again, and run a full scan using your normal Antivirus application ( Microsoft Security Essentials is recommended).
- At this point your PC is usually clean.
Note: There are some malware infections that not only block safe mode, but also prevent you from doing anything at all.
Remove Advanced Virus Remover
Actually getting rid of this virus is really simple. You should just grab the free, Portable edition of SUPERAntiSpyware and put it on a flash drive (from another computer).
Then open it up on the PC, making sure to run the scan immediately. Remember don not close it and re-open it, or Advanced Virus Remover will figure out what you're doing and block you!
Once it's all done, it'll get rid of the bad stuff.
Now you'll be prompted to reboot, which you should probably do.
If Advanced Virus Remover Blocks SUPERAntiSpyware
If you have an issue running SUPERAntiSpyware, you can try and use the following technique. Open up the Windows Run box with the Win+R shortcut key (or through the Start Menu). Then type in the following commands, hitting enter after each one.
taskkill /f /im winupdate86.exe
taskkill /f /im winlogon86.exe
Note: This may or may not help. The goal is to try and shut down the processes that are blocking you, and malware changes filenames all the time.
You can also open up Windows Explorer, head into the WindowsSystem32 folder, and try and locate the bad processes there (hit the properties screen on some recent, odd-looking files), then use the taskkill command to get rid of them. This technique is how I usually figure out what the virus is hiding under, so I can easily kill it with just a few keystrokes.
Cleanup the Leftovers
Also I highly recommend running a second pass with the free edition of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware.
In this case, you will notice some more messages popping up from the virus since my SUPERAntiSpyware definitions were out of date.
Just ignore any messages, and continue with the scan, letting Malwarebytes remove everything else.
Now you'll need to reboot your system, then install Microsoft Security Essentials and run another full scan. We also highly recommend Microsoft Security Essentials for real-time protection against these types of things.
Note: If you used a thumb drive at any point during this process, you should make sure and scan that as well. I've had viruses hop over to the thumb drive, ready to infect the next machine.
You can get more Windows 7 tips, Windows 7 Wallpapers, Windows 7 Software from http://www.Newton360.com
