How to Remove APCSafe | APCSafe Removal Guide
APCSafe is another of the recent variations on the Wini family of rogue antivirus applications. Like all the others it is pushed by trojan activity… this is typically a video site that claims to have a sought after video, but alas…. the video cannot be viewed unless you install a flashplayer update that they have on the site, or a video codec. These of course, aren’t really what they are, they are the payload of this rogue antivirus. Once it is installed it will run at boot, scan files and complain of many viruses on your system as well as security problems with your computer. None of these can be fixed without paying for the software, so it claims. This is a scam, so please read on for how to remove apcsafe.
Among the easiest ways to get rid of any software that you don’t work is to go to the control panel and use the add/remove programs applet to uninstall apcsafe or whichever other software you are trying to get rid of. This may not work for rogue antivirus software because typically these programs don’t want to be uninstalled. If it does work for some reason, then you should still follow it up with a scan from a reputable malware removal tool and then a reputable antivirus application.
Your next best option for removing a pest such as apcsafe is to use a tool such as the portable scanner from superantispyware. There is a link on my virus removal toolkit page. It is updated daily and so you shouldn’t need to update it once it downloads. It will use a random filename each time it is downloaded so you should take care to make a note of the filename as it downloads so you can find it when the download is completed. If for some reason it doesn’t run when it’s downloaded you may try the following tricks to run it. 1) rename it to either explorer.exe iexplore.exe or firefox.exe and then retry running it. 2) reboot into safe mode and retry running it. When it does run, remove all the infections found and then run it again, and again until things come clear.
If you wish to perform a manual removal of apcsafe you will need to refer to the list of filenames below of those files associated with apcsafe.
%user%\Local Settings\temp\00002e99
%docs%\All Users\Desktop\APcSafe.lnk
%docs%\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\APcSafe\1 APcSafe.lnk
%docs%\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\APcSafe\2 Homepage.lnk
%docs%\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\APcSafe\3 Uninstall.lnk
%progfiles%\APcSafe Software\APcSafe\APcSafe.exe
%progfiles%\APcSafe Software\APcSafe\uninstall.exe
%win%\system32\RANDOM.exe
%win%\system32\spool\prtprocs\w32×86\00003e8f.tmp
After you have removed the files above or using a tool such as superantispyware then you should follow up with further malware removal scans and antivirus applications. I typically will scan until things come clean. You should make sure that you use only reputable products for these scans. Free is okay, an online scanner is okay, just make sure they have a good reputation.
If you are administrator of a computer network you may wish to block traffic to apcsafe.com