I was called down to the shipping department today because they were telling me that their computer was finding roughly 60 viruses! I thought this was a bit odd because our company runs AVG for an anti-virus software package and it seems to do a pretty good job.
I go down to the shipping department and look at their screen. Some sort of XP Antivirus program is running and doing a scan of their computer. I have no idea how it got installed and don’t care but when I go and click stop it closes. Next I try and close the application icon in the system tray. Nothing happens. Weird!
Since we don’t allow unauthorized software on our machines at work I go and try to remove it, only to find that it is not in the add/remove application control panel. Double weird!
A quick search on Google comes up with many posts about how to remove XP Antivirus and how it is a badware program. XP Antivirus gets tagged as a badware (or rogue application) because you cannot uninstall it by normal means.
XP Antivirus in unregistered mode constantly pops up and run scans. It will tell you that it has found viruses on your computer and ask you to remove it. When you click on the ‘remove’ button you’re prompted to register it. This sort of application forces people to purchase the program by praying on the un-informed computer users on the internet. You look at the scan and freak out because you have viruses? If you’re not already running an antivirus program you’ll probably think to register it to get rid of the viruses. I ran AVG on the machine and it came up with no viruses. I checked our AVG database and it too also has not found any viruses on this particular machine.
Removal of the XP Antivirus application was pretty quick and easy. You log in via safe-mode, delete the XP Antivirus folder in the C:/Program Files/ directory and reboot. When you get back to the desktop you run a Registry script that removes any entries found from the XP Antivirus software. Reboot again and you’re done! System fixed!
This type of programming is shameful. I mean prying on the uninformed and misinterpreting people is a really poor way of doing business. I hope something can be done about companies who have these sorts of practices.
Please people be very wary of things you download on the internet. Don’t go download-happy and click on everything you see. You’ll break your machine pretty good! Yes the Mac users don’t have to worry as much as us Windows users.. but still!
Norton 360Apr 23, 2008 at 18:10:26
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Oh, I had this problem too and much more problems. Now I am using AVG, it is really great.
SylviaApr 29, 2008 at 11:23:48
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You mentioned: “When you get back to the desktop you run a Registry script that removes any entries found from the XP Antivirus software. Reboot again and you’re done! System fixed!”
How do you run this? Where? Which commands?
Tyler Ingram April 29th, 2008 at 12:11:24[Link]
The registry file from the URL in the above post. If you save it to your desktop you can double-click on it to execute the registry fix. So when you download the file, save it to the desktop. When you are at the step to reboot, reboot and once back to the desktop, double-click the file and it will fix the registry for you. (it removes any instance of reference to the program).
XPAntivirusMay 28, 2008 at 02:58:39
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The most antivirus software may be expensive and hard to find. They may also take up a lot of space on your PC and most of them will not even remove all viruses. You can have most viruses eliminated from your PC in minutes with one of the programs here.
Antivirus2008ExpertJun 25, 2008 at 07:05:41
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The number of variations of XP antivirus causes much confusion amongst PC users. The removal instructions posted on many forums are suitable for particular types of infection, and may not work for all victims. Regretfully, I still don’t know if there’s a software that get rids of it completely. Additional manual tricks are always needed – partially because some malicious files are left in the system.