"Windows Police Pro" Virus and how to remove it

[mywebwork]

Hi - I'm posting this in case other Warriors get infected by this virus:

Yesterday evening I started receiving waring messages on one of my XP notebooks from a product called "Windows Police Pro". It claimed that a whole bunch of files were infected and of course offered to fix all this for me if I were to purchase the product.

This was an obvious scam, not only did I not ever knowingly download or install "Windows Police Pro" but one of the "infected" applications it reported was Microsoft Word which was not even installed on this computer! 'Windows Police Pro" refused to let me run a lot of applications, claiming they were infected with viruses that only it could fix. You could not close it, even with Task Manager. In effect, the computer was completely unusable.

In case anyone else experiences this here is how you get rid of it:

1 - Use a non-infected computer and download the excellent application MalwareBytes, you can get a free version at Malwarebytes.org . This program is a real lifesaver!

2 - Rename the setup from mbam-setup.exe to mb.exe - "Windows Police Pro" knows about MalwareBytes and won't let the install file run unless you rename it.

3 - Copy the renamed file to a USB drive. Remove the drive and connect it to the infected PC.

4 - Open task manager, chances are 'Windows Police Pro" is already running. You wil see it as a System task, shut it down. Keep Task Manager open as the program will keep restarting itself and you'll want to keep shutting it down.

5 - Run the mb.exe file from your USB drive. Accept all the defaults to install MalwareBytes.

6 - Run a full scan on all of your hard disks. This can take time, mine took an hour. During the scan you'll probably want to kill 'Windows Police Pro" a few hundred times with Task Manager, although once the scan has started you can leave it alone.

7 - When the scan is done it will report a number of registry keys and files associated with or infected by 'Windows Police Pro". Click the button to delete them. You will need to reboot to remove some files.

This procedure cleaned the machine beautifully. Hope it is of help to others.

Bill

[Aaron Moser]

Funny you brought this up. I just had this malware on my PC last night and got rid of it using malwarebytes. I thought I was screwed for a minute and would have to reformat again but malwarebytes did a great job.

Weird thing is I don't even know how I got it. I didn't visit any unsafe sites and I was browsing using FireFox and the NoScript add-on which usually blocks everything. Windows Police Pro just popped up all the sudden.

I think this malware program can infect innocent websites. It must be the best scam going!

[JesseT]

For future reference you could probably fore-go the continous cancelling out of this program by simply booting up in safemode and installing/running mb's. Hope I don't get that crap on my pc.

[KimW]

Malwarebyte is one of the best free programs out there.