Froggy IT Solutions

Removing fake or rogue antivirus software is not usually too difficult, but does take some time.

A rogue or fake antivirus is a program crafted to took look like a genuine antivirus program, though it is in fact a virus that has or has attempted to infect your computer. To learn more about recognizing these programs refer to How to recognize fake or rogue antivirus software.

Now that you know this program is bad, how do you get rid of it? The biggest obstacle most people face is that they cannot run or install any programs to remedy the situation. The rogue antivirus locks everything down and will not allow any executables to run.

The trick to overcome this, is to bring up the Task Manager before the virus loads. If you can accomplish this, most rogue viruses cannot close the Task Manager out if it is already running. Once you have the Task Manager up, do not close it out. Leave the Task Manager open the entire time, you may need it again. This will allow you to find and kill the virus processes.

Restart the system, if you do not have to log in, then start hitting the Ctrl-Alt-Del keys as soon as you see the mouse pointer appear. If you need to log in, then start hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del as soon as you hit enter after typing in your password. Once the Task Panel appears, choose Task Manager. This may take a few attempts, so keep trying until you get it to come up.

Now click on the processes tab and start searching for the bad processes. Since these rogue processes can have many different names, you will have to try to close ones you are not familiar with, experiment with this a little. If you close out a wrong process, the system may reboot, just try it again, but try to remember the ones you already attempted or write them down.

Now that you have more control over your computer, let’s download some software. They’re four programs you will need to completely scan and remove these viruses. Click and download these free tools Ccleaner, Malwarebytes, SuperAntiSpyware, and Spybot S&D. For more free tools visit froggyit.com/free-tools.

Once these are downloaded and installed, then proceed to cleanup your system. First, to save scan times and reduce risk of reinfection, turn off Windows System Restore. This process will vary depending on which version of Windows you are running. In XP, just right-click on “My Computer” and select properties, then click the System Restore tab.

Then run Ccleaner on your system to remove the temp and junk files, viruses like to hide there. After that, click on Tools > Startup in Ccleaner and delete the start-up entries for the virus processes you killed out with Task Manager.

Next run the other programs SuperAntiSpyware, Malwarebytes, and Spybot S&D, respectively and follow the steps to remove everything that is found. Running the scans a second time is a good idea, just to make sure all the harmful stuff is gone.

Before opening Internet Explorer again, reset it back to manufacturer settings by Right-Clicking on the icon and clicking properties. Go to the advanced tab and click reset at the very bottom. This only applies to Internet Explorer 7 or above.

After cleaning up some viruses, this may render your computer unable to run executables. You can download some registry repair scripts from froggyit.com/free-tools to help repair this problem.