Apparently, despite being extra careful, somehow I’ve ended up with the ShopGlider PUP on my computer. Fortunately it seems to be confined to Google Chrome, but it’s a major pain in the ass. I’ve followed almost all of the steps listed here, and even though it now says I’m clean, I’m still getting the fucking pop-ups! The only thing I have yet to do is download HitmanPro – is it worth it? (Just the free trial?) This laptop is only a year old, and I do NOT need to have this one fail like my old one did.
Oh, and now shit – McAfee real time scanning won’t stay on! Help!!! crying
Ditch McAfee at once. Put on MIcrosoft Security Essentials instead (free). They both don’t work particularly well, but McAfee is positively dangerous and a major resource hog.
Regarding your immediate problem, I’ve had moderate success with ad-Aware http://www.lavasoft.com/
You might try disconnecting your computer from the internet, then starting in safe mode before you go through the removal steps. As I understand things, the nastier of malware bugs will continue to contact home base if you leave your computer connected while cleansing it.
Many times I have seen that malware cleaners do not reset the Google “new window” and “new tab” pages to open in the settings.
This is because the cleaners do assume that you are the one that did set those, unfortunately many malware programs do change those settings so when a new tab or new windows is called many times it goes to the malware site ready to infect again and call the pop ups. If the clean-up has been done the next thing to do is to reset the browser settings.
Hitman Pro is good. Also try AdwCleaner. The MalwareBytes forum says it may be hiding in a program called Adblock Super, which is not the same as the Adblock Plus we know and love:
Maybe it’s not so bad now, but I had Ad-Aware on an old computer and it was a real pain in the ass. Kept on popping up windows wanting an update. If I clicked on Windows/File Explorer, the Ad-Aware window would launch.
This was going on after uninstalling it and manually deleting all the Lavasoft files and folders I could find. I finally found a forum that had advice about deleting a hidden/non-obvious Lavasoft registry file to finally kill it (or some file, it’s been a while).
Personally, I’ve never installed it again or ever would.
Hitman Pro is definitely worth downloading for the free trial. In my case, it successfully cleaned a malware infection that Microsoft Security Essentials and Malwarebytes couldn’t even detect.
Since you seem to know the name of the malware this might not apply, but check your router.
Last year I had pop-up ads and Hitman, McAffee, and Lavasoft were no good. Finally after much googling determined my router was infected (easy to google “router hack make/model”). Short story, one trip to Best Buy for a new router and the problem ended.
Adblock Super? I thought it was an update to Adblock? So that could be it? Oh shit. Am I screwed?
AdwCleaner found some files and quaranteened them – although it doesn’t seem to have an option to delete the files from that folder. Will manually doing it work? (Those were .VIR files, which, I assume, are virus files?)
Okay, so I go through these steps then. Okay, I’ll try that and report back. Thank you, you guys are a big help.
Microsoft Security Essentials doesn’t do that type of malware detection. It wasn’t designed to. You need a specialised tool.
Also, none of the detection software actually picks up the really nasty vectors which use the never-ending compromises of the Oracle Java Virtual Machine and Adbobe Flash and Adobe PDF reader.
As a serious word of precaution, turn off any Java extensions in your browser - not javascript. just java. Also disable flash player in your browser and used HTML5 instead. For PDF always download first and view with the normal viewer. Don’t view inside a web browser.
That did it!!! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!! If you’re ever in the 'Burgh, I owe you a beer.
Thank you, everyone, I really, really appreciate your help. Now, if I could just get my hands on the assholes who write this shit – seriously, I think it should be a capital crime.
I’m going to run a virus scan though now, just in case. It makes me feel better. That and watch my Penguins.
(And should I empty that quarantine folder, just in case? Yeah, I misspelled it before)
Definitely ditch McAfee, it hasn’t been relevant for a decade. Microsoft Security Essentials is ok, but I would also install AVG anti-virus. Its free and works very well (it scans for malware as well as viruses).
Then download & install Malwarebytes Anti-malware and/or Spybot. And, most importantly, run them each at least once in safe mode. Starting in safe mode prevents most spyware from loading & locking its files from deletion. Repeatedly press F8 during boot-up to get to the safe mode option. Unless you have Windows 8, in which case you need to set it using msconfig.exe (do a Google search on Windows 8 safe mode)…
Yeah, I forgot that because usually when you install a third party anti-virus it automatically disables all of Windows’ built-in ones. And Windows usually detects the new one and doesn’t complain about its being disabled. Usually…
