You know you do everything you can think of to keep these pests off of your computer but they always seem to sneak in.
I recently had to replace my CD burner so instead of a plain ole CD burner I got a DVD/CD burner. Now with this new found power, yesterday I decided hey I can watch DVD's on my PC. So I popped the DVD into the drive and since I'm running Win 2000 Pro it came up, "You don't have a codec to decode a DVD". Ahh I need a DVD software player. So I proceeded to go to my ole standby location for freeware or shareware software downloads.com. Did a search of DVD Player and viola. Found a good free DVD Player. I downloaded it, good no viruses and ran the install. During the install I noticed that not all thing were going well. Yes the install seemed to behave properly but there were these little pop up asking me to install other items. Of course I said NO to all but the product I wanted to install. Everything seemed fine, it played my DVD. SUPER! Or so I thought.
That's when my problems began. I went about my usual, programming and surfing looking for bug fixes for my code. When All of a sudden POP. Hey! This site never had pop-ups before. Well maybe this is something new. So I left that site and came to a familiar site INReview and all of a sudden POP, close pop up POP "Hey Wait!!! I'm a registered user I shouldn't be getting pop ups." Then it hit me, I must have some Adware, the only place I could have gotten it was from the download of my new DVD Player.
Solution - Run Ad-aware 6
I then proceeded to run Ad-aware 6, the scan revealed a few (well over 70) adware additions. I clicked them all and removed. Below are the main offenders.
But it didn't end there. It didn't remove it all the first go around, I had to let Ad-aware 6 run again after reboot. Which it removed items that it couldn't the first go around. And this morning. I still had the problem. However I believe that a simple reboot cleared everything up. Ad-aware 6 did OK!
Bottom line
My ole standby for Freeware and Shareware, downloads.com . which used to be a good safe place to obtain software may have to go on my "do not go to" list like Iwon.com. I might give them one more chance to not corrupt my computer but they are on thin ice as we speak.
As I finished typing the above. POP BargainsBuddy pops up. So all in all Ad-Aware did not catch that one. So I did a search and found this fix.
quote:
How to remove / uninstall CashBack Buddy and Bargains.exe and get rid of them for good
These instructions are written for Windows XP, but similar operating systems should have similar removal procedures.
Go to Start à Run
Type Regedit <ENTER>
Make a backup of your registry for safety, by going to File à Export à Export range: all. If something goes wrong, you can reload this backup copy to restore your settings.
Go to Edit à Find
Type cashback
When a cashback menu is found, right-click on it and select delete.
Go to Edit à Find next
Delete cashback.exe and bargains.exe (BullsEyeNetwork) from the My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Win
dows\CurrentVersion\Run directory by selecting them on the right half of the window and hitting Delete.
Repeat the process searching for Bargains.
Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to enter the Windows Task Manager.
Go to the Processes tab.
Select Cashback.exe and Bargains.exe and delete them.
Exit the Registry Editor by clicking on the X on the top right corner of the window.
Sometimes I'm such a putz. Recently my wife got out the old video camrea. Yeah the 10 year old VHS Hitachi video camera to record an interview for her Spanish Medical Terminology class. It didn't go well, the battery was dead and the battery charger was toast. So yesterday I did a search on the net for "What to do with that old video camera!" and viola a site with that exact title. I double clicked and OHHHHH NOOOO! to my horror A PORN SITE. NASTY PORN. Quick click it off before....too late. I started getting popup messages from my AVG Antivirus. Trojan on my computer. 1, 2, 3, 4 wait now 7. Good thing I got a good antivirus. Run a scan and reboot. Says it's clean better run another scan just in case. Clean whew that was close. Better do another reboot just in case. All seems well. A couple hours later and I'm back to surfing the net. POP Bullseye Advertising. OH NO!!!! But I have two, count them two Adware buster programs. Ad-aware and Spy Doctor. I run Spy Doctor first, it finds about 80 new infections which it cleans. Then to be on the safe side I run Ad-aware. It find over 100 infections. Oh my! Here I go again. It actually took me a good two 10 hour days to clean that crap off of my computer.
Let me tell you about Bullseye, Bullseye is part of Bargain Buddy along with ebates and something else I can't remember. I found no less than 4 additional processes besides the two mentioned above. There was istsvc.exe running, a directory for NTS with a service running, VVSN with service running and SearchRelevancey with a service running. Each adware item starts a process in the background upon startup. They are all in your registry in the startup section so they start everytime you boot your computer. You can remove them with ad-aware or Spy Doctor but they will return on reboot. Remove the Startup Run entries and they return. Go into safe mode and remove the directories and they return. It's a vicious circle. So here is how I handled it.
1. Boot to safe mode
2. Remove listing in Registry
3. Run Spy Doctor and Ad-Aware (if you only have one then run what you have)
4. Remove the directories in Program Files
5. Go to Add/Remove Programs and remove the programs there. Read the steps very carefully because they are tricky, On one step you think you should click yes for remove when you actually need to click no. Answer the loaded question survey. I guess it really doesn't matter what you answer there.
Some items will say that there is nothing to remove do you want to remove the entry. That is because you removed it in other steps.
I hope my misery helps make your life a little easier.
