I’m working on a customer’s computer this evening and being confronted by a huge amount of persistent spyware infections. I’m use to working with some of the tougher ones but these are just a bit ridiculous. This lady plays a lot of games….a LOT of games. I’ve never seen more games installed on a PC before.I personally believe that if a game is free and requires you to download something to your computer to play it, you should run like hell. These usually install no end of spyware/adware/malware on your PC. I’v managed a pretty thorough cleaning but there are some remnants left over of a couple programs that appear to be very difficult to get rid of. A brief Google search confirms the problems others have had with these.
The major culprits I have leftovers from are Gamevance, Playsushi, and MyWebSearch. The last one isn’t too bad. It’s been around so long that removal methods have matured for it. The other two are less frequent and less researched. They basically insert text adds into your browser window. Anyway lets proceed to removal.
Gamevance:
Step 1) Go to http://gamevance.com/deactivate.php
Step 2) Click on the link for the the manual uninstall. This will download a removal tool to your computer.
Step 3) Run the tool and reboot when prompted.
That will get rid of most of the problem. Since the removal tool is provided by Gamevance it will of course leave some leftovers. We’ll take care of those after covering the Playsushi issue.
PlaySushi:
Step 1) Go to http://www.playsushi.com/Deactivate.ps
Step 2) Click on the link at the bottom for the the removal tool. This will download a removal tool to your computer.
Step 3) Run the tool and reboot when prompted.
Again this will get rid of most of the junk but not all since the tool is provided by PlaySushi.
Getting rid of the remnants:
Step 1) Go to http://www.malwarebytes.org
Step 2) Download the free version of Malwarebytes.
Step 3) Install MBAM and run an update.
Step 4) Run a full system scan, which will take some time.
Step 5) View the scan results and remove any infections it finds.
Step 6) Reboot the PC.
Step 7) Go to http://www.superantispyware.com
Step 8) Download the free Portable version of SuperAntiSpyware.
Step 9) Run the program and check for updates.
Step 10) Do a full system scan and remove everything it finds when it’s done.
Step 11) Reboot the PC.
This seems to get rid of all the remnants for me. I’ve found both SAS and MBAM to be needed. Each picks up a few things the other misses. MBAM has to be installed but SAS can be run as a portable version with no installation needed. I find both to be very useful tools to keep on hand.
If you need more in-depth info on cleaning up your PC please reference my full security guide here:
https://gideond.wordpress.com/2010/09/18/security-for-your-windows-computer/
GideonD's ~ Mind in Mayhem 