My wife has a HP computer and the video download software Vongo has not only been impossible to remove, but it has hooked into some Trojan that she was infected with a couple of months ago, so that everytime the system is rewritten it reinstalls itself and brings system files out of hibernation. We have spent at least 400 minutes on the phone with HP, and she had someone rewrite the master boot record. He told her that he had gotten rid of Vongo, and then an hour later told her it had reproduced itself. He tried to rip it out at the root, but when our daughter logged onto a site with Flash, Vongo restarted its service and brought a whole bunch of system files out of hibernation. If you google it, you’ll see that a lot of people have asked HP this question. We only got the answer “You shouldn’t try to stop services.” But someone has posted an answer about how to get rid of it, which is to end the Windows Installer service. As she found out, this meant that she couldn’t install Word or Norton until she rescued the installer from Vongo by letting the service run again.
We have stopped the service, deleted the program files, and she’s even gone into the registry willy-nilly style searching for all mentions of Vongo or Starz. We want to rid our machine of the cancer that is Vongo–any oncologists/dopers out there?
If not is there anyone who knows how to start the Baker Act process?
I might be in the market for a straight jacket in a Neutral Color with a plunging neckline that won’t make her butt look big.
Thanks for the help,
We have been on the cnet site and fought this beast using this method, It comes up 1st or 2nd on a google search. Vongo goes away and then comes back. It’s like fighting zombies, they just keep comming.
I had one virus which looked like I could kill it and where it looked like my anti-virus recognized it, and all the latest patches to Windows were in and everything and it would still come back. I’m relatively sure that what was happening is that the virus had a part in it that made it appear that all the holes had been blocked off like they should be, so Windows and my anti-virus thought that everything was good, but in truth the hole was still there.
In cases like this, I usually just back everything up and do a clean wipe of the hard drive. I mean, a fresh install can take a few hours…which is a significant block of time. But these deep spyware/virus infections are something else. You can clear them up almost instantly…or they can turn into the Bataan death march of computing and drag into weeks, accompanied by a slow death spiral in system stability. There’s just a point where you have to ask how crazy do you want to make yourself with this?
Well, here’s something you can try. I’ve been using this guy’s programs for years now, and I’ve never had any problems on any computer I’ve installed it on.
Go to that site, and install Startup Control Panel and Startup Monitor. SCP lets you disable programs that are configured to run at startup- be careful not to disable anything you want to run at startup, but see if you can find the Vongo program in the list and uncheck it. Startup Monitor will stay resident on your computer, and when a program tries to set itself to run at startup, a popup will appear and ask you if you really want your computer to allow it.
It’s a very simple concept, but since I’ve started using both of those programs, I haven’t had any problems. The only thing I’m worried about is that one of those unscrupulous companies might find out about Lin’s programs and set their scumware to anticipate the block.
