So last night we accidently killed our home computer. While I went out to the movies with Ace and Anthony, Denis stayed home. He hopped online and decided to download a song from Audiogalaxy. When he logged in he got a message saying “You need to update your satellite”, so he promptly updated. He saw that it was loading a bunch of spyware (adware programs that monitor your internet activity in order to personalize and increase the popup ads you get when you surf the ‘net) and after the new AG Satellite was installed he went and deleted the spyware files.
And promptly corrupted our IE browser.
It’s my fault, really. A couple weeks ago at work I got a message from AG asking me to update my satellite that I use at work. I said no, I’m fine with the old version, thank you very much. I knew about AG’s spyware and knew that the version I had did NOT contain bundled spyware.
But I neglected to tell Denis not to get v0.0609.
So now our computer is broken, and we need to fix it. We had Ad-aware 5.0 on our home machine, and I periodically ran it, but Denis, not knowing what it was, deleted it from our computer last week. We’ll hopefully get it fixed tonight. If not, we needed a new computer anyway.
But for anyone out there experience the Audiogalaxy spyware problem, this is what I’ve found online as to how to get rid of Gator/GAIN spyware from your machine.
1. Close all open browsers and explorer windows before deleting the files. There may something there in use when you tried to delete.
2. Before you uninstall, open Windows Task Manager, highlight CMESys.exe, and click “end process.” Now you can uninstall with no problems.
3. Get rid of this adware using Ad-Aware 5.0 (which is free, or Ad-Aware 5.0 Plus, which is $15 and does a bit more for you) and Norton CleanSweep.
Finally, as a safety measure, run Ad-Aware every few days to go through your computer and check for spyware of any kind. It’s a great little program that will keep you running clean – and will help you keep those annoying pop-up ads to a minimum.
Here’s another bit of info on getting rid of Gator. Millions of us have this problem, and I’m happy to offer these links as a way of combatting spyware!
I also found this bit of advice on getting rid of popups in general, although I haven’t tried it myself. If you have any other insight as to how to keep spyware off computers, drop a comment on us and let us know!
Hey, glad you’re back!
I acutally purchased Ad Aware Pro but haven’t installed it yet. Sounds like I better get it installed soon. Trouble is I am too busy reading blogs! 🙂
People should send viruses to these spyware makers. Ad Aware is great!
Thanx,
SD
ADaware won’t get rid Of Gator on my comuter.It keeps saying that it is part of another program.I can’t seem to find that other program.
Any ideas?
Bob
to get rid of gator, try run adaware when windows is in “safe mode”
The newest version of AdAware is 6.0. If you are using an old version it will not get rid of newer spyware. There’s another spyware removal program that’s better than AdAware imo, Spybot Search & Destroy, also free. You can get it here:
http://patrick.kolla.de/
If you get Spybot, afer downloading it, use the button to search for updates, download them, then close Spybot, close Internet Explorer. Then launch and run it. YOu might have to fun it twice to get rid of everything. If you use AdAware, get the new version and get the updates for it also.
here is a tip, say spyhunter, it do not harm your computer, it helps it!
NoAdware Review
NoAdware review – Adware Removal. Internet spyware experts have long claimed NoAdware is a “rogue” software product despite being heavily advertised on the internet as an effective adware removal tool.