Download Accelerator

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Following a recommendation in a national newspaper technology column, I installed Download Accelerator. While it does what it says, it installs spyware on the PC which Spybot 1.3 identifies but cannot remove.
Consequently, I attempted to uninstall the program – but the uninstaller says the install log is missing. Since I have not removed any installation logs I assume that the program does not want to be uninstalled and is having a laugh.
How can I a) remove the spyware and/or remove the program, please?
TIA

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I’ve had this problem previously when my spyware detectors remove parts of the offending program. Then, Add/Remove programs will not work. I have had success by reinstalling the program (Download Accelerator) and then uninstalling it through Add/Remove programs. This site also gives comprehensive details on how to manually remove the program. Hope this helps.

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Good grief! The amount of stuff to be removed from the registry must about halve its size!

John

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There certainly are a great number of entries. But then, I guess that’s the price we pay for installing software that we haven’t thoroughly investiged prior to installing (and I’m guilty of that too).

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I’ve gone down this path with “rogue” software before. I’ve found the registry cleaning to be less daunting, using a regclean tool like JV16 Power Tools. Many of the offending entries appear as errors, once the files themselves have been deleted, and can be selected and removed “en masse”. I guess you still have to end up doing some sort of manual checking though.

Alan

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I’ve gone down this path with “rogue” software before. I’ve found the registry cleaning to be less daunting, using a regclean tool like JV16 Power Tools. Many of the offending entries appear as errors, once the files themselves have been deleted, and can be selected and removed “en masse”. I guess you still have to end up doing some sort of manual checking though.

Alan

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There certainly are a great number of entries. But then, I guess that’s the price we pay for installing software that we haven’t thoroughly investiged prior to installing (and I’m guilty of that too).

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Good grief! The amount of stuff to be removed from the registry must about halve its size!

John

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Hi Rebel
Thanks for the help. Sorry for the delay; was away over the weekend and then ISP has been playing up so no email or ability to get to the internet.
The site you pointed me to is very comprehensive, but I am very dense so do not understand a lot of their file addresses eg programfilesdir+, profilepath+, commonprograms+, desktopdir+
Can you assist with decodes for these on my W2K machine, please?
Also, are you recommeding that I should download the latest DAP because it will then uninstall?
Finally, my real worry is that by getting rid of this horror, it will have screwed up IE so I am left with no download capability at all. Is that likely and, if so, what preventative steps can I take to stop it?
Silverback

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Can’t help you with the location of these files on your machine, but they shouldn’t be too hard to find. Eg. programfilesdir probably refers to Program Files, etc. If you can’t resolve these, then you may have to search for the files in question (tedious and lengthy, but necessary). As well, you will note that not all of the referenced files may have been installed.

As far as the reinstallation of DA, I am just going by my own experience in the past. While cleaning up a friend’s machine, I ran Spybot, Ad-Aware, etc. and they removed parts, but not all of the offending programs. Upon seeing that parts of the programs were still active, I attempted an uninstall. But, because parts of the program had been removed, uninstall would not work. At this point, I decided to reinstall. After reinstallation, I then uninstalled (successful using Add/Remove programs) and then let Ad-Aware, Spybot, etc. clean up any remnants. In a few cases, I also had to manually remove components.

I think your worry about damaging the download capabilities of IE is unfounded. If, by some chance however this does happen, you can always do a “Repair” install of XP. This will not overwrite any of your programs, settings, etc. – will just repair any damaged parts of XP including IE. Hope this helps.

Edited to add: Don’t forget to restore your original settings

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Hi Rebel
Thanks again for your helpful comments.
I found an option on DAP – Diasable Browser Integration – so I went to a download site and tried a download. This, of course, invoked DAP. I then used the disable option and tried again. This time, the IE downloader was initiated, so I think it should be possible to get back to using IE until I can get Leechget (thanks again Tony55) into operation. I use W2k, not XP, but I don’t think this shoudl cause a problem. (famous last words)
I have tried searching for a large number of the files detailed in that incredibly helpful PestPatrol page, but with not a lot of success and in any case, I’m nervous about such large scale messing with the registry, so the long and the short of it is that I am going to buy PestPatrol and let it deal with the thing. I’m just glad that someone can remove it.
I despise spyware producers and users with a vengeance. I understand that, if I want to use their product I might have to put up with spyware as part of the licence, but there can be no justification for leaving the junk around after the programme has been removed.
May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits!

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Along with there being no excuse for leaving the spyware behind when removing the product, there’s also no excuse IMO for not disclosing up front that the product will install the spyware. Some products do but most that I’ve seen hide their ‘disclosure’ in the bowels of the EULA. If they disclose it at all.

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“hide their ‘disclosure’ in the bowels of the EULA. If they disclose it at all” and may even tell one that the spyware will be retained when the program is removed.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Unfortunately, real spyware and adware sometimes install libraries or controls that are normally used by legitimate software. When that happens, the library/control may wind up getting recognized as spyware even though it is perfectly innocent and was installed on your machine by a non-spyware product. I ran into this with the Redemption.dll library, the EasyMail SMTP library and a couple of Sheridan custom controls used by SpeedFerret. None of them were installed by spyware products, and in fact, the two libraries are licensed by use for own use in our commercial apps. In that event, you scream loud and long at the spyware-killer product support and let the software authors know that all or part of their products are being misidentified as pests.

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Unfortunately, real spyware and adware sometimes install libraries or controls that are normally used by legitimate software. When that happens, the library/control may wind up getting recognized as spyware even though it is perfectly innocent and was installed on your machine by a non-spyware product. I ran into this with the Redemption.dll library, the EasyMail SMTP library and a couple of Sheridan custom controls used by SpeedFerret. None of them were installed by spyware products, and in fact, the two libraries are licensed by use for own use in our commercial apps. In that event, you scream loud and long at the spyware-killer product support and let the software authors know that all or part of their products are being misidentified as pests.

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Along with there being no excuse for leaving the spyware behind when removing the product, there’s also no excuse IMO for not disclosing up front that the product will install the spyware. Some products do but most that I’ve seen hide their ‘disclosure’ in the bowels of the EULA. If they disclose it at all.

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Hi Rebel
Thanks again for your helpful comments.
I found an option on DAP – Diasable Browser Integration – so I went to a download site and tried a download. This, of course, invoked DAP. I then used the disable option and tried again. This time, the IE downloader was initiated, so I think it should be possible to get back to using IE until I can get Leechget (thanks again Tony55) into operation. I use W2k, not XP, but I don’t think this shoudl cause a problem. (famous last words)
I have tried searching for a large number of the files detailed in that incredibly helpful PestPatrol page, but with not a lot of success and in any case, I’m nervous about such large scale messing with the registry, so the long and the short of it is that I am going to buy PestPatrol and let it deal with the thing. I’m just glad that someone can remove it.
I despise spyware producers and users with a vengeance. I understand that, if I want to use their product I might have to put up with spyware as part of the licence, but there can be no justification for leaving the junk around after the programme has been removed.
May the fleas of a thousand camels infest their armpits!

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Rebel
It’s gone! glory be to PestPatrol.
Thank you so much.
Now to get Leechget.
Silverback

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Glad your problem has been resolved. As for PestPatrol, I’ve heard many favourable comments about this software, and after visitiing their site from time to time, their support and very comprehensive removal instructions for various malware is impressive. Think I may give this one a whirl myself.

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I use it, along with Ad-Aware and SpyBot, but I’ve learned the hard way to look carefully at any registry keys and ocx files it identifies as pests.

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I use it, along with Ad-Aware and SpyBot, but I’ve learned the hard way to look carefully at any registry keys and ocx files it identifies as pests.

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Glad your problem has been resolved. As for PestPatrol, I’ve heard many favourable comments about this software, and after visitiing their site from time to time, their support and very comprehensive removal instructions for various malware is impressive. Think I may give this one a whirl myself.

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Rebel
It’s gone! glory be to PestPatrol.
Thank you so much.
Now to get Leechget.
Silverback

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Can’t help you with the location of these files on your machine, but they shouldn’t be too hard to find. Eg. programfilesdir probably refers to Program Files, etc. If you can’t resolve these, then you may have to search for the files in question (tedious and lengthy, but necessary). As well, you will note that not all of the referenced files may have been installed.

As far as the reinstallation of DA, I am just going by my own experience in the past. While cleaning up a friend’s machine, I ran Spybot, Ad-Aware, etc. and they removed parts, but not all of the offending programs. Upon seeing that parts of the programs were still active, I attempted an uninstall. But, because parts of the program had been removed, uninstall would not work. At this point, I decided to reinstall. After reinstallation, I then uninstalled (successful using Add/Remove programs) and then let Ad-Aware, Spybot, etc. clean up any remnants. In a few cases, I also had to manually remove components.

I think your worry about damaging the download capabilities of IE is unfounded. If, by some chance however this does happen, you can always do a “Repair” install of XP. This will not overwrite any of your programs, settings, etc. – will just repair any damaged parts of XP including IE. Hope this helps.

Edited to add: Don’t forget to restore your original settings

Reply | Quote

Hi Rebel
Thanks for the help. Sorry for the delay; was away over the weekend and then ISP has been playing up so no email or ability to get to the internet.
The site you pointed me to is very comprehensive, but I am very dense so do not understand a lot of their file addresses eg programfilesdir+, profilepath+, commonprograms+, desktopdir+
Can you assist with decodes for these on my W2K machine, please?
Also, are you recommeding that I should download the latest DAP because it will then uninstall?
Finally, my real worry is that by getting rid of this horror, it will have screwed up IE so I am left with no download capability at all. Is that likely and, if so, what preventative steps can I take to stop it?
Silverback

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If you are still looking for a download manager then one of the best is Leechget

It has no spyware and is free for personal use. Patrick Kolla, the creator of Spybot S&D rated it as the best in this review.

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Hello Tony
Thanks for the tip. I wish I had known about Leechget before I used DAP; I certainly will after I’ve got rid of DAP.

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Hello Tony
Thanks for the tip. I wish I had known about Leechget before I used DAP; I certainly will after I’ve got rid of DAP.

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Hi Tony
After all that, I can’t use Leechget because the latest Leechget requires IE 6.x and I’m on IE5.

I’m having a go with Download Express, which came second in Patrick’s review.
Thanks for your help, too.

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I have used Download Express in the past and can recommend it. It is easy to use with a simple interface and is definately one of the better download managers.

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I’m up and running at last using Download Accelerator. I had quite a job to get it going though, finally tracking the issue down to Norton Internet Security. For some reason, although I authorised DE to access the internet, Norton kept falling over. Eventually, I forced a rule into Norton (this took a long time too – for a long while, when I tried to add the rule, Norton fell over in another place) and everything seems to have settled down.
I’ve test downloaded Spybot 1.3 again (4.15Mb) and everything worked, so thanks again to loungers for coming up trumps again.

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If you have a broadband connection a download accelerator is not really needed. I got rid of whatever I was using when I got a cable connection about 4 years ago (can’t remember that far back). Not missed it since. And I d/l the network version of all service packs. It may take me a bit longer but less headache than getting yet another piece of software installed, configured, and debugged on my setup.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks again, guys, but I don’t have broadband and won’t be getting it until the price reduces by significant amounts.
We use the net for email and some surfing, and of course, the occasional download.
There’s no justification for the high expense of broadband yet.

Thanks again, loungers all, for sorting the problem and getting me going. I recommend this site to anyone who has the slightest interest in computing!

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Thanks again, guys, but I don’t have broadband and won’t be getting it until the price reduces by significant amounts.
We use the net for email and some surfing, and of course, the occasional download.
There’s no justification for the high expense of broadband yet.

Thanks again, loungers all, for sorting the problem and getting me going. I recommend this site to anyone who has the slightest interest in computing!

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If you have a broadband connection a download accelerator is not really needed. I got rid of whatever I was using when I got a cable connection about 4 years ago (can’t remember that far back). Not missed it since. And I d/l the network version of all service packs. It may take me a bit longer but less headache than getting yet another piece of software installed, configured, and debugged on my setup.

Joe

--Joe

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I agree completely with joeperez‘s advice. If you have a broadband connection, download accelerators are simply not worth the potential and actual (as you have seen) problems they may introduce to your system.

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I agree completely with joeperez‘s advice. If you have a broadband connection, download accelerators are simply not worth the potential and actual (as you have seen) problems they may introduce to your system.

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I’m up and running at last using Download Accelerator. I had quite a job to get it going though, finally tracking the issue down to Norton Internet Security. For some reason, although I authorised DE to access the internet, Norton kept falling over. Eventually, I forced a rule into Norton (this took a long time too – for a long while, when I tried to add the rule, Norton fell over in another place) and everything seems to have settled down.
I’ve test downloaded Spybot 1.3 again (4.15Mb) and everything worked, so thanks again to loungers for coming up trumps again.

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I have used Download Express in the past and can recommend it. It is easy to use with a simple interface and is definately one of the better download managers.

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Hi Tony
After all that, I can’t use Leechget because the latest Leechget requires IE 6.x and I’m on IE5.

I’m having a go with Download Express, which came second in Patrick’s review.
Thanks for your help, too.

Reply | Quote

If you are still looking for a download manager then one of the best is Leechget

It has no spyware and is free for personal use. Patrick Kolla, the creator of Spybot S&D rated it as the best in this review.

Reply | Quote