Cloned from Personal Guard 2009 and Personal Detector, Advanced Defender is a rogue-antispyware that tries to trick users into paying for a software license. It gets installed through the use of malicious software and Trojan viruses that are propagated across the internet by scammers. Once established on the user’s system, The virus loads itself at startup and performs a large number of fake system scans, returning false results that warn the user that the system is under serious threat from malicious programs. It also blocks any legitimate antivirus software that the user may have already installed on the computer. Advanced Defender displays endless fake pop-ups from the Windows taskbar, pointing out legitimate files and executables as viruses. This rogue software then repeatedly urges the user to purchase the license to the ‘full’ version of the software, claiming that the currently installed ‘trial’ version is incapable of cleaning out all the detected ‘threats’. However, as this virus is a fake application, none of its versions can properly scan or clean any computer system.
Advanced Defender
As soon as you find a copy of this rogue software on your computer, you should take steps to remove Advanced Defender. In order to do this, you must stop its processes, unregister its DLLs, delete its files and folders and remove its registry entries.
Advanced Defender Manual Removal Procedures
The first step that needs to be taken to remove Advanced Defender is to stop the following processes:
- advanceddefender.exe
- certofsystem.exe
- explorers.exe
- regp.exe
- spoos.exe
- winscent.exe
The next step in file removal is to unregister the following DLL file:
- microsoftdefend.dll
Next, delete the following files and folders:
- c:\Program Files\Advanced Defender
- c:\WINDOWS\certofsystem.exe
- c:\WINDOWS\explorers.exe
- c:\WINDOWS\microsoftdefend.dll
- c:\WINDOWS\regp.exe
- c:\WINDOWS\secureit.com
- c:\WINDOWS\spoos.exe
- c:\WINDOWS\system32\winscent.exe
- c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Microsoft PData
- c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Microsoft PData\track.wid
- %UserProfile%\Desktop\Advanced Defender.lnk
- %UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\Advanced Defender
- %UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\Advanced Defender\Advanced Defender.lnk
Registry Removal Proedures
Removing files and folders alone is not sufficient to completely remove Advanced Defender. You must remove the following keys and settings from the registry as well:
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Advanced Defender
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Advanced Defender
- HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System “DisableTaskMgr” = “1”
- HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run “advanceddefender”
Once the registry has been cleaned, your computer is safe from Advanced Defender.
Delete Advanced Defender Directories:
c:\Program Files\Advanced Defender
Outside Resources:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/virus-removal/remove-advanced-defender
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