Adware

[Bikewer]

I have been able to avoid almost all adware/spyware/viruses etc. for years, but I got tagged the other day with a bit that came attached to another program. Installed several adware programs including "surfsidekick" and a whole pile of spyware.
Took me a couple of hours to clean my rig of this junk. In the end, I have one bit that's still there, and I can't figure out how to get rid of it.

If I go to Add/Remove programs, there's a program listed called Missing Information. The file size is a whopping 569 megabytes. If you click on this to remove it, you don't get the "remove" box. Instead, you get a "click here for support" message, which takes you to a link which says
"This link will take you to a wonderous offer for <product name>" and an underlined link.
Naturally, I have not clicked this thing.

I cannot find this thing on my hard drive, and it's not in program files anywhere. I even have a more advanced add/remove program, and this does not show up on it. I suspect it's just a link, which when clicked will install more gunk.
I've been unable to find any information on this thing, possibly due to the clever title, which gives you all sorts of hits on unrelated stuff.
Anyone hear of this bit of crud and how to delete it?

 

[Angus McPresley]

Try downloading SpyBot and running a full system scan. It's good about finding and clearing out most stuff like that, and it's free.

 

[ChristineR]

Have you tried Bazooka? It's a very fast spyware dectector, not a remover. That may at least give you the thing's official name.

 

[Bikewer]

Hehe- I figured it out; it's not spyware. It's an incomplete download of a half-life 2 mod that I had quite forgotten about. Evidently, enough of the thing came through to cause it to show up on the program list, but it's not actually "there" anywhere.

 

[Kelly]

I'm no PC expert, but I have had to deal with some pretty malicious spyware in the past and eventually erradicated it without having to reformat.

I would end up using multiple programs. It just seems like one does not catch it all.

The last bad one was killed by a combo of Webroot Spysweeper and Ewido.

 

[RayG]

Check out the hints here:

http://windowsxp.mvps.org/addremove.htm

RayG