Instead of being able to relax this afternoon, I spent the entire time getting rid of a stubborn virus from my pc. I am not sure if I should call it a virus, spyware or malware but it sure gave me a headache. I am talking about Spyware Guard 2008.

According to malwarehelp.org:

Spyware Guard 2008 is a new entrant to the family of rogue security software. It is not to be confused with SpywareGuard a fine freeware from Javacool software.

A rogue security software belongs to a family of software products that call themselves as antivirus, antispyware or registry cleaners and often use deceptive or high pressure sales tactics and deliberate false positives to convince users into buying a license/subscription. They are often repackaged and renamed. They do not actually remove malware instead many of them add more malware of their own.

It was not very easy to delete Spyware Guard 2008 from the computer system. Even if I tried to uninstall it, it will load again when I restart the computer. From the forum that I read, they recommend that MalwareBytes and SuprAntiSpyware should be used to get rid of the virus.

However, it’s a bit tricky because Spyware Guard 2008 won’t let you run these softwares. It will block them hence, you won’t be able to remove it using these anti-spywares. What they recommend was to download both of these softwares using another computer and place it in a USB drive.

You also have to rename both of the files so that Spyware Guard 2008 won’t block them. I did try to do this in the safe mode but it still did not work. What I did was tried to restore system settings to an earlier date. Surprisingly, it worked. After that I was able to download MalwareBytes to get rid of the infected files.

For more help regarding this topic, I suggest you visit this thread:

http://www.malwarehelp.org/spyware-guard-2008-analysis-and-removal-2008.html