/me slaps forehead: PART DEUX

[Bucket]

In the past half hour, I've been doing battle with a "downloader"(don't know what the web-lingo is for this, but it's a file that a website installs). I just went into "Add/Remove Programs" and uninstalled a few offenders, but one continues to elude me. I found it under ProgramFiles under the alias "AproposClient". At first, I was switching between this folder and the Task Manager trying to deduce which EXE's it was running, and restarting the computer only to find that it's attached itself to my startup routine(I get a hundred popups before WIN2000 fully loads). On top of that, it's eating up my CPU usage(currently at 98%). And Explorer hangs-- it can't display files.

I've tried everything from deleting its child files in the folder to actually going into the file and deleting chunks of its code. Of course, that resulted in an amusing adventure when I realized all of my EXE's were being opened by WordPad(took me while to get them back to Application status). Yet this resilient little fucker just keeps on truckin'. The DLL it's using seems to be controlling everything, and continues to slip through my grasp.

Any suggestions? Besides getting myself a blocker, of course.

[Lord FlatHead]

Maybe Ad-Aware or SpyBot will remove it from your system.

[bartwart]

And get a firewall.

[Stealthy Ivan]

Look for Hijackthis.exe it gets rid of embeded programs in the registery.

[Bucket]

Well, Ad-Aware was successful in weeding out the "children" spies, yet there seems to be an "overlord" somewhere on my system. Also, the program failed to search the ROOT for installers... but fortunately Explorer doesn't hang anymore so I was able to delete them.

The last stage in my mission is to find a way to terminate DLL's so I can finish what Ad-Aware started. You know how you can't delete DLL's if the program is using them? Well, obviously, the programs are running full-time, so the DLL's are always in use.

If anyone could give me some information regarding this, I will finally have complete control over my system once again.

[Arioch]

Try running it from safe mode.

[Ichor]

Try this:

Find all of the dll files. Shut down the computer and have it restart in DOS mode. Then manually delete (or perhaps rename) each one.

[Arioch]

No, better to let Ad-Aware catch the DLL and the references to the DLL all at once, I think.

So, try runing AAW in safe mode Windows.