Can't remove "Setup" program

Recently, my little brother downloaded something from some cheat website - it was meant to be a Trillian clone (with MSN/Yahoo/AIM), but now there's something on the Desktop called "Setup".

When I try to run it, an error message appears saying it is "not a valid Win32 application", and yet when I try to remove it, it claims it is being used by another program. I've checked for spyware and viruses (with Norton, Ad-aware and Spybot S+D), and nothing's come up.

Also, for some reason, when I started up today, an MS-DOS shortcut to "Setup" appeared for no obvious reason (also on the Desktop), and now I can't delete either of them. Help please!

 

Hmmm... can you delete them in safe mode? I would expect a process running in the background has them in use.

You should DEFINITELY visit this thread.

 

I've just tried restarting in safe mode - it's allowed me to remove the shortcut, but the "Setup" program is still being used by something.

Thanks for the thread link anyway, I'll try what it says in there ASAP.

 

Well, I did most of the stuff in that thread, but it's not working...to be honest, I don't think this thing is actually malware. It doesn't seem to be slowing down my PC too much (though Norton has been scanning and crashing a lot recently), it's just there.

I've talked to my bro, and he says he downloaded it to the desktop because it was displaying the "not a valid Win32 application" error when he tried to run it straight from the link.

Whatever it is, I still can't get rid of it. I've used Brute Force Uninstaller before (removing Alcan/Alcra), but I don't really get how the whole script thing works. Any suggestions? Advice?

 

Try these. There are more things to try that will get rid of it if they don't work.

Just open NOTEPAD and then click on "OPEN". Navigate to the file in the little Notepad "explorer" window and right click on the file and delete it.

OR this

Explorer.exe in XP has a bad habit of wanting to hang on to files, even when you have finished using them - therefore when you try to delete the file, XP will say "Access Denied".
This error occurs more often when working with media files - mp3, avi, mpeg etc.
TIP:
Close all open applications.
Open a command prompt and navigate to the directory with the offending files.
Then open the Task Manager and click on the Processes tab. select "explorer.exe" under Image Name. Click "End Process".
That will leave you with only the command prompt and the task manager running.
Now at the Command Prompt, its time to delete the file(s). Using the DEL command. Example c:>\movies\DEL movie.avi
Now the files are deleted, go to the task manager and click on the Applications tab. Click the "New Task" button. in the dialog, type explorer.exe and click OK.


For folders the command is 'rd'.

 

Thanks Hipster Doofus. I tried the Notepad thing, and it's still displaying the same error message as before. Also, the MS-DOS shortcut to the file respawned again, for some reason.

Im not too sure about the "Command Prompt" thing, though...I've tried typing in (after documents and settings etc.) >DEL\Desktop\Setup.EXE, but it says it can't find the file. I have a feeling it's me doing something wrong here - I'm not used to using command prompt, so I'm not all that sure exactly what to type.

Can someone give me an idea of what I should type after C:\Documents and settings\Emma> ? Thanks for being patient with me.

 

Well, I fixed it - just ran C-Cleaner and ran "scan for issues", it found a whole bunch of things wrong. Whatever the issue was, it's stopped displaying the error, and I've managed to delete Setup.exe and the shortcut normally.

Thanks anyway!

 

Congrats on solving your problem. Now you can download the reat Trillian, for free, from MG.

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download680.html

Bazza

 

CCleaner is the best thing since sliced bread.