I'm not going to claim to be an expert (nor do I play one on TV), and when one of these sorts of things slipped through all of my layers of protection/malware/antivirus, I had to manually remove it. Anyhow, one of my friends has been struggling to get rid of this and posted a plea for help, so here are my recommendations. If you're on a computer that is not yours, then you should probably talk to the owners, your IT, etc, mmkay? ;-)The key symptoms: messages that your computer is infected (and you need to buy a product to get rid of it). However, these tricks should work with just about any piece of malware out there. First course of action should always be your antivirus/malware software, but if you can't get to that or it doesn't work, there are other options. If you have this particular nasty bug, you can not get to your antivirus software nor can you get out on the net.You'll need to save any needed files from 'the net on a flash drive or disk, to use on the infected computer. As a security precaution, if you can unplug your modem or shut down network access to the infected computer, that would probably be wise, in my opinion.Once you've gotten rid of this nasty bug, it would be wise to make a new System Restore point.So, here are some suggestions, IF you can't get to your antivirus/malware software:
- Use a removal tool from the web
- System restore or force last successful installation (builtin windows features)
- Use backup discs or original installation discs
- Use HijackThis and manually remove + cleanup
- Microsoft has a free malicious software remover. http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.aspx
- Malwarebytes: http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
- The first half of this post focuses on using a removal tool. The second half focuses on manually deleting and cleaning up. If you would prefer other alternatives to manually deleting, you can try some of the things I've listed below. System Restore can be an excellent tool.