Windows 7: Beware of think point program and how to get rid of it

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A friend's Vista laptop just got whammed good with this particular BUG! This one will not allow you to even boot up in safe mode. Once booted live from a date recovery stick a stand alone security tool was copied over to the infected drive and is in progress of sweeping this off.

The safe mode /commenad prompt only option was selected when going to start that up threough the dos like command prompt. Another system recently infected by a phony av program at least allowed a boot into safe mode's desktop where a shortcut for the same tool could be used while the fake created a new admin account to lock the user out from anything else.

Be on the look out for this one and other fakes!

I've been dealing with Think Point in the forums as well. The instructions by "Debra H." don't include repairing Windows Shell Reg. See #9 in Remove ThinkPoint (Uninstall Guide)

I wouldn't count on the "Debra H." fully to start with and had the VIPRE Rescue Program cleaning the Vista laptop finding a list of items. Apparently the owner's kids were playing an online game and clicked on something else leading to the infection.

What the VRP will do is regain control of the desktop by removing all traces of the TP bugware. Another sweep will have to be seen to later. Apparently the owner didn't realize the desktop wasn't fully loading when noticing the various shortcuts were seemingly missing while the desktop was never reached.

The one thing to add besides a thanks for the far more detailed guide which should be a large help for anyone else is that this particular bug is made to resemble the MS Security Essentials at first sight! Yet there are 2006 references to the same name showing it has also seen an updated appearance at various times.

This regardless of removal methods used is still a stubborn animal and should be avoided.

Update: And the word is in on the VIPRE Rescue Program not being able to handle this particular fake spyware program while the 30 day trial for the full VIPRE Premium with firewall took care of that as well as some 176 other "bugs" on the infected laptop in question. I'm sure other bug removers besides AVG 9.0 could also do the same once a scan is run once at the desktop.

Following the initial scan and a second reboot(first required followed by initial scan part of installation) the desktop was back to normal. A subsequent scan was still performed once all of the update definitions went to find a nice cleaned up laptop again.(until the novice user manages more bugs anyways! )