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Removing Adware stuff?

pnj

Turbo Monkey till the fat lady sings
Aug 14, 2002
4,696
40
seattle
my girlfriend got some crap virus or something on her laptop. it's a vista windows machine. I ran McAfee and it found something called adware - mirar.

I had McAfee delete it and found some stuff online that said to delete some keys from the registry but those keys don't exist..

thoughts, suggestions?

basicly, you open a browser and it opens more browsers...and more and more.
 

kidwoo

Artisanal Tweet Curator
I use crap cleaner, ad aware, spybot and cureit.


I had some crap I got on my computer that was slowing down my editing software and the combo of the above got rid of MOST of it. The problem with some of this sh1t is that it goes out and fishes for other programs and installs them......creating a compounding problem. Try one or all of those out and see if it works.
 

hooples3

Fuggetaboutit!
Mar 14, 2005
5,245
0
Brooklyn
ad aware works great for me..matched up with Zonealarm i have been (knock on wood) trouble free for quite a while.. or you can go get a Mac.
you should run ad aware at least once a week..
 

DRB

unemployed bum
Oct 24, 2002
15,242
0
Watchin' you. Writing it all down.
Yep its giving you popups based on the website you requested.

The reality is that most of the times these things hide themselves in the registry re-installing themselves after you reboot the machine. So even after you clean it, the crap just comes back.

I'd really recommend going to http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

and start with that. Its going to probably take awhile to get rid of it especially with the popups occurring.
 

vtjim

Beware of Milo & Otis
Jan 6, 2006
1,346
0
North Andover MA
Try running multiple spyware cleaners in Windows Safe Mode.

I would also suggest a registry cleaner. You can get a free trial from www.Cnet.com.

Edit: If you know the name of the actual virus and cannot get rid of it with any of this advise, just Google search it and you should be able to find a walk-through to get rid of it.
 

pnj

Turbo Monkey till the fat lady sings
Aug 14, 2002
4,696
40
seattle
thanks for the suggestions. I don't know the name of the actuall program that's causing the issue. McAfee found "adware - mirar".

Getting a Mac isn't an option....
 

pnj

Turbo Monkey till the fat lady sings
Aug 14, 2002
4,696
40
seattle
well, I still can't get rid of this thing.

spybot finds stuff but they come back when I reboot.. do you run that program in safe mode? what am I doing wrong?
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,162
1,261
NC
Always use spyware cleaners in safe mode if you already have an infection. It doesn't eliminate everything but it does prevent a lot of items from starting up.

Try running it in safe mode.

Supposedly, Mirar shows up in your add/remove programs, so remove it there first, reboot into safe mode, and try using Spybot.