Hi Will - Well, I can't speak to other uninstallers, since I haven't used
them. My recommendation of Merijn's is based on his other software with
which I'm familiar and confidence engendered by his credentials in the
"spyware" community.
I do know that I have some problems with the blanket "Kazaa" Registry
removal steps that you've advocated in another post. First, they won't
remove such things as Download Manager references which KazaaBegone does
detect and delete. In addition, they will lead a user to remove valid
Registry entries under certain circumstances. For example, if you have Eric
Howes IESpyAd Restricted Domains list installed, your approach would cause
the user to delete two entries on that list, specifically making him/her
vulnerable to Kazaa driveby's that s/he would otherwise be protected
against.
I just can't speak to the kmd.exe issue, since I don't specifically
know whether KazaaBegone detects/deletes it or not. I should think that
what you've proposed would probably be OK if kmd's only known association
was with Kazaa. What concerns me, however, is that a simple Google search
of kmd.exe finds 702 references, many of the first ones that I looked
at being legitimate programs that are unrelated to Kazaa (although of course
many others are).
I suggest that such manual Registry cleaning approachs need to be done with
great caution by an astute and knowledgeable user with, as you've properly
advocated, good backup (I highly second your recommendation of ERUNT/ERDNT
for XP/Win2k users, BTW). Unfortunately, many users don't fit this profile.
--
Please respond in the same thread.
Regards, Jim Byrd, MS-MVP
In
Will Denny said:
Hi Jim
I've tried all kinds of Kazaa uninstallers, but haven't found one yet
that rids the Registry of all references to that P2P program. After
trying the uninstallers there is still a reference to kmd.exe in the
Registry, which has to be deleted manually. That file is also left
on the hard disk/partition, which again needs a manual deletion.
Will
