Removing Antivirus XP 2008 and Restoring Your Desktop
This Labor Day weekend I fixed another PC infected with Antivirus XP 2008. This is a very common infection so I thought I’d let my readers know what I did to remove it.
The good folks over at www.bleepingcomputer.com suggest probably the quickest way to remove the Antivirus XP 2008 infection at http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/malware-removal/remove-antivirus-xp-2008. If you go there, be sure to come back here to step 7.
1. Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware. (Right-Click and save to your desktop)
http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/malwarebytes/mbam-setup.exe
2. Close all programs and windows on your PC, including your web browser.
3. On your Desktop double-click mbam-setup.exe to install the removal program. Leave the default setting.
4. Update the program if asked and begin the Quick Scan.
5. After it’s finished running click the Remove Selected button.
6. When finished you can close the program.
7. This program does a fast and great job removing Antivirus XP 2008 but it doesn’t restore your desktop or fix your Display properties window so it shows all of the tabs. To fix those, open your registry by clicking Start > Run > Type “regedit” > Enter > Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\System and find ‘NoDispBackgroundPage’ and/or ‘NoDispScrSavPage’ and change the values to 0. While your in the registry editor search for ‘RestoreOpenIsSafe’ and change the value to 1. If you found RestoreOpenIsSafe once search for it one more time and make the the same change again. After you’ve made these changes close the Registry Editor.
8. Now you can open your display properties and change your desktop background to something else. Make a note of what was selected as your background image.
9. Search your PC for the image file that was selected in step 8 and delete it.
10. Finally, to insure your PC doesn’t have any more infections go to www.eset.com/onlinescan and run a full scan.
Hope that helps. Follow my advice HERE to keep your computing experience safe and secure.
Have a great day!
-Bert
