Too Persistent Program! Refuses to get unintalled!

[Purifier]

Hi all,

I have some difficulty in uninstalling some program...
Please take a look in here, that's where I posted it at first.

http://www.vbforums.com/showthread.p...7&goto=newpost

Thanks a lot.

[Purifier]

Please visit the link I posted.

All of the problem's information is already in there.
Thanks.

[tampabay420]

steve;

Hello,
I use Windows 98 OS and I got a program I cannot uninstall.
The program always starts itself when the computer is rebooted.
Please help me remove it from being loaded every reboot.

Here are a few details:

A) There is no shortcut for the program in the \Startup dir.

B) There is no reference inside Win.INI file in the "Run=" line.

C) I looked with MSconfig, and saw the program got a reference to be loaded in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run so I deleted this reference, but somehow, when I rebooted, the reference was in there again (!?), the program wrote the reference back when the computer was rebooted!

D) I scanned the whole registry for the program's execution line, because I thought maybe it's running from some other key, but nothing was found.

E) I tried to be sophisticated: I tried to just delete the nasty exe, but I couldn't: "File is in use" was the answer.

F) I exited to an MSDOS mode, and deleted it successfully, and thought that maybe I finally got rid of that, but when I ran Windows98 again, the program copied itself again to where I deleted it from, and ran itself again on the reboot.

What am I doing?!?!? Where could the program ran itself from?

Thanks.

[Maverick811]

When did this start happening? Did you install some downloaded file which in turn caused this program to keep starting up?

[tampabay420]

here is some different ways that a program can autostart...

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...ight=autostart

[steve.milner]

Originally posted here by Purifier
Please visit the link I posted.

All of the problem's information is already in there.
Thanks.

Sorry, must be going blind.

I swear when I looked at that post it didn't have the link on it.

[VicE$DoS$]

Hi Purifier,
First of all thanks for not being bothered to post the problem. Linking it was just lazy.

Questions.
Do you have a Windows 98 disk?
Do you have any AntiVirus software running is it upto date?

Answers.
1. Re-install Windows 98. It wont take long.
2. Buy some Antivirus or if you do own some already update it.

If you dont wanna do either of those OR if its not a malicious program I have another suggestion. KILL the boot sector.
Perhaps it is a virus / malicous programme that is hidden in the boot sector, so everytime you delete the 'nasty .exe' it writes itself back from the boot sector.

Try this:

Delete the 'nasty.exe' from Windows.
Then open up MSDOS prompt and type 'FDISK /MBR' then reboot. That should delete the master boot record and anything horrible hiding in there.

Good Luck
V$D$

[SirDice]

What's the exe's name in the run key?

I know of at least 1 virus that will put itself back in there (cannot remember the name though). It's a nasty one. You will have to rename regedit.exe to regedit.com to be able to detect and delete it. It hooks itself into the .exe mapping in Classes.

So to make sure:
Rename Regedit.exe to Regedit.com
Start Regedit.com
Check this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\exefile\shell\open\command

it should read (Default) "%1" %*

If not change it! Then remove that run key again and reboot.


Edit -- Found the name I was looking for. It's Yaha that does tricks with the exe mapping.

[steve.milner]

Okay, I this sounds like either a virus, or it's spyware.

Try out an up to date virus scanner first by using an emergency boot floppy & see what happens.

Let us know how you get on.

Steve

[Cybr1d]

try Adware, Spybot S&D, or The cleaner...sorry i dont have the links for those, They're somewhere in here tho ...i'm sure one of the seniors here will post em for u. Good Luck