How to Remove AntiMalware | Antimalware Removal Guide
Antimalware is the name of a particularly interesting rogue antivirus and rogue antimalware application. One tip off that it is a rogue application is that one of it’s first actions is the attempted removal of the following trusted and legitimate antivirus, security and antimalware applications: AVG, Nod32, Agnitum, Sophos, Avira, Avast, Kaspersky, Malwarebytes antimalware, bitdefender. Antimalware also scans your hard drive and claims many files are infected with viruses. It uses the names of known viruses, but the files that it finds are infected really are not viral. It further claims that it will clean up the problems when you purchase the software, but of course, you can’t fix problems that don’t really exist. In short everyone sees the same scan results. Further… antimalware tries to present the look and feel of the windows security center. Read on for how to remove AntiMalware. (Please do not confuse this with the legitimate Malwarebytes Antimalware which we will use to remove this rogue.)
Among the other warning messages you may see from Antimalware are the following:
User’s activity loggers detected!
It’s strongly recommended to remove detected threats right now!
AntiMalware detected the virus of the harmful program on your computer!
Internet Explorer is infected with worm Rootkit.Win32.Agent.pp. This worm can harm your computer.
AntiMalware network security alert
Network attack rejected!
Your computer is being attacked from remote host. Attack has been classified as Remote code execution attempt.
First, you really should try going to the control panel and using add/remove programs to attempt to uninstall antimalware. If that works I suggest you still continue to download and install malwarebytes antimalware and scan with a trusted antivirus to make certain that the system is cleaned up.
To download malwarebytes antimalware please visit the virus removal toolkit and download that. While you are there you may wish to download process explorer. It may be necessary for one of the next steps.
Due to the nature of this rogue you may not be able to uninstall malwarebytes antimalware normally. After all, this rogue tries to uninstall legitimate antivirus programs. For that reason I suspect option #3 of the following will be what you will have to use. However, you may try the following tricks to install and run malwarebytes antimalware installer, updater and scan. 1) rename the installer file from mbam-setup.exe to something else (other.exe) and then retry the install,update and scan. 2) reboot into safe mode with networking and retry the installer, update and scan or 3) continue on with a manual removal and re-attempt the install of malwarebytes after you have killed off the running processes associated with antimalware.
To manually remove antimalware you will need to disable (kill off) the following running processes (using the task manager). If you are unable to launch the task manager you have a few options 1) copy the task manager program file (taskmgr.exe) and paste it to a new file on the desktop. Next rename that file to something else (fuzzy.exe) and then run it. 2) Use process explorer (mentioned above) to kill off the following running processes:
antimalware.exe
uninstall.exe
The following files and folders are associated with Antimalware and should be deleted in order to remove Antimalware:
%progfiles%\AntiMalware
%progfiles%\AntiMalware\amext.dll
%progfiles%\AntiMalware\antimalware.exe
%progfiles%\AntiMalware\help.ico
%progfiles%\AntiMalware\malw.db
%progfiles%\AntiMalware\uninstall.exe
%docs%\All Users\Desktop\AntiMalware Support.lnk
%docs%\All Users\Desktop\AntiMalware.lnk
%docs%\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\AntiMalware
%docs%\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\AntiMalware\AntiMalware Support.lnk
%docs%\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\AntiMalware\AntiMalware.lnk
%docs%\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\AntiMalware\Uninstall AntiMalware.lnk
%tmp%\4otjesjty.mof
%tmp%\c.dat
Even after a complete manual removal of antimalware (the above files) I would still install and run malwarebytes antimalware as well as another trusted anitivirus application and scan your computer with both. (An online antivirus scan might be a good choice as well.)