i deleted mozilla firefox. On restarting i opened outlook, then i got a popup and its Firefox with porn. How does this happen after i have deleted the program?
i deleted mozilla firefox in control panel. On restarting i opened outlook, then i got a popup and its a Firefox window with porn. How does this happen after i have deleted the program? We had a user that downloaded torrents, i have run anti-virus and spyware programs, as well as using Winpatrol to see whats running in the background. I have taken out all suspicious DLL and stratups as well as checking all services and cleaning all i can find. After all was said and done, on a clean restart of windows, firefox, after being deleted, is still popping up with multiple porn tabs. I can't think how this is even possible. Any ideas?
All Replies (6)
Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer. Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - AdwCleaner:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml - SuperAntispyware:
http://www.superantispyware.com/ - Microsoft Safety Scanner:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Windows Defender:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-defender - Spybot Search & Destroy:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Kasperky Free Security Scan:
http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
- Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:
http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446
See also:
This is standard stuff.
I appreciate this. However, the important part to note is that the pop-ups are coming up in firefox, after it has been deleted. And it is doing it when there is no browser even open.
In my experience this is something new. I have done battle with everything out there for the last 15 years and never really been stuck. This one is a bit baffling and seems to be doing things that shouldn't be possible.
Honestly, that's not possible. Maybe that user had a 2nd version of Firefox installed that didn't appear in the Control Panel or maybe even in the Windows Registry; like maybe Firefox Portable??
Well Edmeister, I would have agreed with you if I had not seen it myself. Hence the reason for my post.
To be clear there was no second portable or any other install. Registry is clean and there is no hint of any possibles when i use winpatrol to see the hidden files, running services, and programs.
I had uninstalled, then rebooted, upon powering up I opened Outlook. With nothing else running, a firefox browser window then opened and multiple pages of porn started to open.
My first thought was that it was the windows messenger service. As it was the only program i am aware of that can make a window pop with no input from the user. However the popup would then have to either say it was from windows messenger service, or it would have to be a picture. As it did not have WMS at the header, and the tabs were active opening pages, this option does not seem reasonable.
Again I agree this should not be possible, However it did happen. Please respond with any Ideas on possibilities, please don't bother to respond if you wish to deny its possibility, this is really not all that helpful.
You may have some (security) software that has restored Firefox on reboot.
You could check the program files folder to see if the Firefox program returns after a reboot.
- (32 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\"
- (64 bit Windows) "C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\"
Do a registry search for Firefox and Mozilla, J I C