H
Hans Gruber
My sympathy to all in dealing with all these insidious
spyware products and I have found only one way to remove
them for good and almost no way, or product, for
preventing them from coming back (other than surf where
you know it to be safe).
- Run SPYBOT (still the best identifying tool out there) -
as we all know Microsoft products suck so stay clear of as
many as possible, they "buy" a good thing and make it bad
(wonder if this post will make it onto the newsgroup once
the mind police at Microsoft see it). Regardless, read on
as there is hope but it will take some effort on your part.
- Let SPYBOT clean what it can and those it cannot it will
provide a listing and say to "retry" at start up - select
yes but do not restart.
- Go into Explorer and look for directories under Program
Files you have not seen before, write them down (you might
see Toolbar, ezulu, SEP, eSyndicate, Toptext, and any
number of others, etc.) Check the listing Spybot has
detected and look at the registry settings in its listing
as it provides great clues on what directories you need to
delete.
- Make an XP boot diskette and leave it in the disk drive.
- Ever heard of XTREE for DOS? If you have it, load it.
Remember the directory it is in.
(http://www.xtreefanpage.org/lowres/x63clone.htm#fm30 -
here is a similar product that is XTree like that lets you
see your file structure in a XTree format in DOS).
Load it onto your hard drive as this will allow you to see
the system and hidden files these pricks have placed in
all the directories you need to delete.
-Now the scary part -pull the power plug on your computer
so these apps don't have a chance to reinstall at shutdown
(not sure if they do but I take no chances anymore). XP
recovers from this so no real worry other than it is a
Microsoft product that allows all these damn products to
run in the first place so it can't get any worse (let's
all support Linux shall we).
-Plug it back in and when your computer comes up you will
see the ever so familiar (at least to the oldies reading
this) C:\>
-Change into the XTREE (CD XTREE) or Filemaster directory
and load the application. Go through and delete all the
directories and application (remember the Hidden and
System files need to have the archive bit changed before
they can be removed). And don't let the "PROG~" thing
scare you, DOS doesn't like long files names but you
should have enough listed to know what is what. Only
delete that which you are certain of as this process is
not for the rookies out there.
Restart your computer after deleting the files and Spybot
will run on startup and this will allow the registry to be
cleaned since we cannot do this through DOS.
The reality of this is that in order to get rid of these
effectively you have to be outside of Windows which is
their launch environment.
I didn't say it would be easy but it does work. Remember
to check Taskmanager when your machine is running as well
and look for unfamiliar processes running and do a lookup
on them on Google. You may have to do this a few times to
get rid of all of them but good luck.
Legal Disclaimer: If you don't know DOS and delete the
wrong thing, blame Microsoft becasue if they wrote proper
code we would not have these problems
spyware products and I have found only one way to remove
them for good and almost no way, or product, for
preventing them from coming back (other than surf where
you know it to be safe).
- Run SPYBOT (still the best identifying tool out there) -
as we all know Microsoft products suck so stay clear of as
many as possible, they "buy" a good thing and make it bad
(wonder if this post will make it onto the newsgroup once
the mind police at Microsoft see it). Regardless, read on
as there is hope but it will take some effort on your part.
- Let SPYBOT clean what it can and those it cannot it will
provide a listing and say to "retry" at start up - select
yes but do not restart.
- Go into Explorer and look for directories under Program
Files you have not seen before, write them down (you might
see Toolbar, ezulu, SEP, eSyndicate, Toptext, and any
number of others, etc.) Check the listing Spybot has
detected and look at the registry settings in its listing
as it provides great clues on what directories you need to
delete.
- Make an XP boot diskette and leave it in the disk drive.
- Ever heard of XTREE for DOS? If you have it, load it.
Remember the directory it is in.
(http://www.xtreefanpage.org/lowres/x63clone.htm#fm30 -
here is a similar product that is XTree like that lets you
see your file structure in a XTree format in DOS).
Load it onto your hard drive as this will allow you to see
the system and hidden files these pricks have placed in
all the directories you need to delete.
-Now the scary part -pull the power plug on your computer
so these apps don't have a chance to reinstall at shutdown
(not sure if they do but I take no chances anymore). XP
recovers from this so no real worry other than it is a
Microsoft product that allows all these damn products to
run in the first place so it can't get any worse (let's
all support Linux shall we).
-Plug it back in and when your computer comes up you will
see the ever so familiar (at least to the oldies reading
this) C:\>
-Change into the XTREE (CD XTREE) or Filemaster directory
and load the application. Go through and delete all the
directories and application (remember the Hidden and
System files need to have the archive bit changed before
they can be removed). And don't let the "PROG~" thing
scare you, DOS doesn't like long files names but you
should have enough listed to know what is what. Only
delete that which you are certain of as this process is
not for the rookies out there.
Restart your computer after deleting the files and Spybot
will run on startup and this will allow the registry to be
cleaned since we cannot do this through DOS.
The reality of this is that in order to get rid of these
effectively you have to be outside of Windows which is
their launch environment.
I didn't say it would be easy but it does work. Remember
to check Taskmanager when your machine is running as well
and look for unfamiliar processes running and do a lookup
on them on Google. You may have to do this a few times to
get rid of all of them but good luck.
Legal Disclaimer: If you don't know DOS and delete the
wrong thing, blame Microsoft becasue if they wrote proper
code we would not have these problems
