Windows 10: ADW Cleaner ghosts

Had a little mishap the other day, a download went bad and I stopped it's installation when I noticed some hanky-panky going on. Immediately run Mbam, WD, Eset online and few more and all suspects were deleted. Only ADW Cleaner found some stuff still left, cleaned it but still comes up with same "Threats".



Normally, I would go into registry and clean/change it myself but the kicker is I can't find any of those entries in the registry.

:)

 

WIN 10 BSOD, seems completely random.

I will run ADW Cleaner tomorrow after work as it is getting too late at the moment.


What was the result of running ADW Cleaner?

 

Pop-up Scam or Microsoft?

The machine now has the PUP.Optional.Legacy that Malware and ADW cleaner can’t remove for good. It detects on ADW cleaner, asks for a reboot then returns after windows 10 starts again.

LMK

 

Hi:

Possible F/Ps may be reported in the special forum reserved for AdwCleaner tech support here.

The team are probably the best folks review your data to determine whether or not those may be F/P detections.

Cheers,
MM

 

Tnx, I just sent them report. Will see what they have to say. Considering there are no entries like that in the registry must be some false positives.

 

It seems to be a known "issue" ToolsLib - Some registry entries cannot be removed by AdwCleaner - Forum

Anyway, since ADWCleaner has been bought by Malwarebytes (untrustworthy company), we can only expect it to be going downhill.

 

My problem is that that entry does not exist in Registry at all. I'm not aware of any hidden registry values. Also tried with "Registry Finder" and "Registry Workshop".

 

Have you restarted after cleaning? Maybe it is just a leftover in MRU/history/pagefile or something like that?

 

Yep, ADW Cleaner insists on restart, checked for those entries before and after restart.

 

Sadly it looks, that adwcleaner has become scareware faster than I have expected, once malwarebytes took over. *Shock

 

AdwCleaner is known to have got false positives since its inception. It's very common and it usually gets resolved after an update. That's why it's always advisable to check To Clean results prior to doing the actual cleaning.

PS - I am pretty curious as to why TairikuOkami despises AdwCleanear adquisition by Malwarebytes that much. As far as I know Malwarebytes products aren't bad per se.

 

Yep, the developers/authors have been responding to a F/P thread for AdwCleaner at bleeping for a long time, long before the acquisition.
(And nearly all major, independent malware removal tools have similar threads there or at another forum.)

No tool is 100% free from false positives/bugs/glitches.
The recent acquisition by Malwarebytes will put resources into product development and support that independent developers might not have.

To brand the product from a well-respected, white-hat security software vendor as "scareware", with no data and especially at a third-party forum, rather than at the product's own official forum for prompt viewing and reply by the developers, seems a bit unfair, at best.
I'm sure that the team would welcome feedback (positive and negative) at that forum HERE.
That would be the best way to directly impact the product's development, improvement, etc.

EOD for me,*Smile
MM (entirely unaffiliated with Malwarebytes)

 

Is AdwCleaner a recommended software to have installed and run regularly or only as a cleanup tool after infection?

 

There's no classical installation, it's portable and not a resident program. You can run it from original downloaded file as you see fit.

 

Right, might as well see if I have some adware... With all of the ad blocking extensions I use it's probably not likely though?