Any easy and free way to get rid of "Personal Guard 2009"?

Factual Questions
1

I seem to have picked up a nasty piece of scareware called “Personal Guard 2009”. It pops up with annoying regularity trying to tell me about the all eleven threats it has found, and that I have to buy it to make them go away.

My computer is Pentium,III
The operating system is Windows XP Home Edition, Version 2002, Service Pack 3
My browser is Internet Explore 8

I run AVG Anti-virus Free and Spybot Search and Destroy. Spybot can find this malware, and accurately identify it as malware. It even tells me that it has healed the malware.

But it hasn’t. Damn thing keeps showing up in my system tray, AND on my desktop as a shortcut.

This morning, I found some program on PCTools that “offered” to remove it for free. I installed it, and it performed a reasonably fast scan of my computer, telling me that it had identified some 250 threats and infections. Then it told me that I had to buy the registered version to get them removed. Or I could buy another product from them and they’d throw in thirty days of the original program as a gift. :rolleyes:

I’m not interested in a “fix” that has me spending money. Anyone know the really free fix for this? Thanks in advance for any assistance.

ETA: Not to worry about the program I installed. It allowed me to uninstall and remove it when I discovered that I don’t want it.

2

malwarebytes anti malware should kill it.

3

Thank you, drachillix, I’ll look into that.

Is your suggestion something that you’ve actually used to deal with this specific problem, or just something you feel comfortable recommending because you’ve had good results in the past? I don’t wish to offend, but “should kill it” is a little less rigorous than “has demonstrated an ability to kill it.” I’ve already been down one blind alley on this.

4

It is a very good fronline cleanup tool and is one of our first guns to draw doing virus/spyware cleanup in my shop. It has a few blind spots but they are damn small

5

I can vouch for malwarebytes removing this particular virus. It uses the same engine as “Windows Antivirus 2009” and “Green Antivirus” and “Security Antivirus” and a lot of other viruses out there that say they are a cure. Malwarebytes will get rid of it, but you may have to run it in ‘safe mode’ and you may have to rename it. In c:\Windows\Program Files\Malwarebytes make a copy of mbam.exe and rename the copy something else. I like using fred.exe. Run fred and do a full scan. It will take a while. Remove all when it finishes and it will need to reboot right away.
Indeed, Malwarebytes is getting to be our ‘big hammer’ lately.

6

Just what I wanted to hear! Thank you so much.

I can picture myself spending the 25 bucks for the full version later (although not this close to payday), but please tell me the free version will let me finish off this Personal Guard vermin.