Antivirus System Pro

Bloody rogue malware. That's what it is. Far from what its name suggests. It's not an antivirus but is the offender of your computing system itself. A disabling annoying money leecher to be exact.

I was surfing online when suddenly my firefox browser disappeared. Then a pop-up message from an icon resembling a sliver and blue shield on the tile appeared saying that my computer has been infected, followed by an automatic full system scan by antivirus system pro. And it detected a whole conundrum of trojans, viruses, spywares, malwares etc. But, I can't remove them unless I proceeded to BUY the software!

Only then I realised that this is not a resident of my Windows and that my normal Avira antivirus had been subtly compromised and converted into a partner. I quickly shut down the system in the hope that it'll miraculously disappear but of course life isn't that simple.

On restarting, I found that I could not open any applications, not even control panel to try and remove the bloody fellow as all attempts were intercepted by an error message stating that the selected application is infected! Amidst all the pop-ups of in-your-face marketing of the cure-it-all Antivirus System Pro and porn sites, I somehow managed to go online through Firefox. IE has completely been held hostage and was working hard churning out unsolicited pop-ups. First instinct was to google 'how to remove antivirus system pro' which came up with a lot of options- most of which I tried for the next 3 days to no avail :(

The only thing that kept me sane was the decision to download an application called rkill which managed to terminate the processes of extortion by running it at startup. This at least allowed me to go online without the harrassment of pop-ups, and gave the false impression that my baby's well...only to be reminded again of the stark truth when the system restarts. The scourge was evidently still there and rkill was only a temporary measure for suppression or invisibility. Amidst the threat of reformating, I decided to change strategy and gave it my last shot before I had no choice but to dismantle my baby.

And lo and behold, the step-by-step guide to removing Antivirus System Pro which worked for me...
1) Run system in safe mode with networking
2) Remove old compromised antivirus
3) Download Malwarebytes and an up-to-date reputable antivirus (obviously not Antivirus System Pro!)
4) Scan full system with both (they should be able to detect and remove)
5) Turn off the computer
6) Say your prayers, hold your breath, do whatever it takes...
7) Start in normal mode.
.... And it's gone! No more pop-ups, no more intrusion of privacy, no more money extortion!!!

I figured the key thing I missed in the past 3 days was Step 1 because I did do everything else but in normal mode though. So maybe that's why it didn't work til now. I just hope my baby stays well.

Damn those viruses/spywares/malwares and their leecherous creators!!!