I’m livid. I’ve never really been livid before- but I am now.
There’s a program on my computer, you see. If I delete it, it reinstalls itself within five minutes. It uninstalls the Google toolbar- I assume because Google Toolbar blocks popups, and this damn program wants me to have popups. It also installs another program, which ALSO wants to bug me with popups- that one uninstalls the Yahoo Companion toolbar, because that toolbar also blocks popups. It constantly resets my start page to its own site. It installs it’s own toolbar- one which doesn’t do anything for me, 'cause I DON’T FUCKING WANT SPYWARE ON MY MACHINE! What’s worse, neither Adaware or Spybot can stop the damn thing- like that damn cat, it just keeps coming back. If I try to uninstall it through my control panel, it insists that it can’t uninstall unless I download something ELSE from their website!
I’m talking, of course, about “Download Plus”. I’ve no idea how it got onto my machine. I’ve also no idea on how to get rid of the fucker. I’m ready to put my fist through the monitor.
Can someone PLEASE explain to me why viruses (virii?) are illegal, and yet this box-jacking, ferret felching piece of shit IS legal? I don’t want it on my computer. It does things to my computer I don’t want it to do. It won’t let me uninstall it. Why the fuck hasn’t someone had these shits arrested yet, and sued the crap out of them? Or, better yet, hung them up by their scrotum in a vat of mouse vomit?
Reminds me of that damn ad for a program that prevents you form gettings excessive pop-ups on your computer, which gets your attention through incessant pop-ups? (I havent’ encountered it often, but its’ a bitch). I also saw a another one that used a whole in windows messenger to promote it’s software to block the whole (that real bitch was i was using MSN messenger, but had the other one on my machine).
Wish I could give you some advice. There honestly should be a law. Actually, see if you can find out the company name and sue them or something. This has got to be harrassment or something.
I know it’s a cliche now but - download adaware. It used to bug me when people would say that to me, but I went and got it and ran it, afterwards my comp felt so fresh and clean.
Of course a day later I re-installed gro…erm something. and all those popups came right back.
Yeah those programs are the worst. watch out for Jupiter something or other. Mouse vomit is to good for them. Anyways …if it is still there. Go TO > Run > type msconfig > Select Startup tab and uncheck the bastard from there. Then you should be able to delete the .exe after that. Install Spyware Blaster on your machine as it prevents some of these fuckers from installling in the 1st place and works pretty well at that.
I find the description very funny
DownloadPlus is a process run at Windows startup which opens pop-up adverts (many of them porn-related) and, for some reason, weather reports.
As usual, I can’t help you with anything useful but I can help you with grammar.
“Virii” is not a correct plural for “virus.” In Latin, “virus” has no plural form - it’s a mass noun meaning “poison.” (“Viri,” iirc, is the plural of vir, “man.”) Solution? Use the English plural form, “viruses.”
My gosh. I so don’t look forward to turning on my PC after reading about this stuff. (I’ve been working exclusively on my Mac for the last several weeks.) No, no smug Mac comments from me—I have a PC as well, and I need to keep it functioning properly.
I have ad-aware, so I’ll have to start it up as soon as I turn on the PC and be extra careful. Yeesh. What a pain in the ass.
Sounds like a bad one, Lightnin’… I’m reminded of the time some little Spyware beastie kept altering my browser startup settings; I had the devil’s own time getting rid of it.
In the spirit of solidarity against true evil, I offer what I hope is some help.
Sounds like there’s a couple steps to getting rid of it for good… have you tried all of this?
On this site they repeat most of the same instructions, but add this:
If you’re comfortable editing the Windows registry (and I think you are), give that a shot.
And if that doesn’t work, here’s some tips that are even more in-depth, from Pest Patrol. The “Manual Removal” section is quite detailed.
Guin, what you’ve got sounds something like what I had such a hard time getting rid of last year on my work laptop. Ad-Aware never did anything about it, but Spy-Bot finally cleared it out. Try that… I use both pretty religiously nowadays.
All this shit should be illegal. This is the Pit, right?
Guin, sounds like you have a browser hijacker. Download HijackThis and check your system out. There’s also more info about hijackers on spywareinfo.com – specifically, scroll down to the “Hijack Removal” section. The rest of the page is also interesting, one highlight pointing out how AOL can insiduously sneak around on your PC.
While you’re at it, I’d recommend for you to download either Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird. IMO these are superior browsers to IE in every way, and have built-in popup blocking. Your IE bookmarks are automatically transferred when you install these programs, so nothing is lost. Firebird is a web browser only, whereas Mozilla also contains an HTML editor and e-mail client, making it twice as big of a download.
I was having a froth inducing hard time with some spyware (esp somefuckingthing called perfectnav). I had ashampoo recommended to me and it worked!! Great program for dll problems.
Some of us, nay, MOST of us PC users don’t have these problems. A little common sense in downloading and clicking ‘yes’ and ‘next’ while online will take you far.
I know it’s confusing and difficult and purposely that way these days. Everyone out there is trying to get as many “sets of eyes” to their website and it gets more “dog eat dog” out there all the time. Use your head when agreeing to anything, any popup, any ad, any download and you’ll go far.
Arm yourself with an updated virus tool and AdAware and you shouldn’t have any trouble. When I run AdAware on my machines, I get very few hits and those are all cookies anyways. This is on a yearly basis-I never run AdAware more often than that.
Ok, I have AdAware on my computer, but I just downloaded the SpyBot that Avalonian recommended. SpyBot says I have a keystroke logger residing on my harddrive. The file identified is part of an old DOS program that hasn’t been modified since 1996. I don’t want to simply delete files willy-nilly, especially since I need that DOS program to work. Any suggestions? I can’t re-load the DOS program if I screw it up, but I really don’t want a potential key logger hanging on to my every word.
[QUOTE=Avalonian]
Sounds like a bad one, Lightnin’… I’m reminded of the time some little Spyware beastie kept altering my browser startup settings; I had the devil’s own time getting rid of it.
If you’re comfortable editing the Windows registry (and I think you are), give that a shot.**Or if you’re on XP, Lightnin’, you can try to have Windows itself restore the registry to something prior to the problems. Instructions to do so can be found in a thread I started on a similar subject, the title is something like “what the hell happened to my computer?” I’d post a link but the hamsters are refusing to search.
