Norton 360

[alwaysaliberal]

Hi! At first it seemed like Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware had worked to get rid of antispyware soft. After following the download directions for it, and running the scan as suggested, the incessant pop-ups were gone, but I looked in my notification area icons, and it was still there. Well, different super random letters.exe, but with the same Antispyware Soft phrase under it, and a weird icon (barely an icon). Like so...

So it seems gone, I followed the instructions you gave for getting chrome and IE to work. But I know it's still there and I'm scared of it (sounds paranoid).

I also updated Norton, and it says my 360 is version 4.1.0.32

Help and thanks!

[alexi]

you have to search on the registry and also in all the pc of....Antispyware Soft    and delete them ..

[alwaysaliberal]

Well, I figured out how to get into the registry, but not search it for the evil antispyware soft.

Will deleting it "render my system inoperable" as I was warned when getting into the registry? I'm no IT pro, that's for certain.

[Quads]

Start regedit.exe by using the start menu,  search box, and then slowly navigate your way to 

---

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify

---

Slowly and carefully.

Now you will see two entries in the listed:

IconStreams 

PastIconsStream.

Select both of them and delete them. You may want to make a backup with the export function before deleting, to do this Right click the entry to delete and choose "export"
 
Now  open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc or Alt + Ctrl +Del), select explorer.exe in the list and choose End Process.


Now in the Task Manager go to the File menu, choose New Task and type in explorer into the open box. Hit Enter, and explorer should start again.


Now your Customize Notification Icons dialog should show you a very clean list of items, but note that any settings you had will be reset to default.  Also that some icons might disappear entirely until you reboot your computer

Quads

[alwaysaliberal]

---

Quads wrote:

Start regedit.exe by using the start menu,  search box, and then slowly navigate your way to 

---

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Classes\Local Settings\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\TrayNotify

---

Slowly and carefully.

Now you will see two entries in the listed:

IconStreams 

PastIconsStream.

Select both of them and delete them. You may want to make a backup with the export function before deleting, to do this Right click the entry to delete and choose "export"
 
Now  open Task Manager (Ctrl+Shift+Esc or Alt + Ctrl +Del), select explorer.exe in the list and choose End Process.


Now in the Task Manager go to the File menu, choose New Task and type in explorer into the open box. Hit Enter, and explorer should start again.


Now your Customize Notification Icons dialog should show you a very clean list of items, but note that any settings you had will be reset to default.  Also that some icons might disappear entirely until you reboot your computer

Quads

---

I got all the way to the task manager prompt, and realized my task manager no longer says "Applications, Processes," etc. Or even has a file menu at all. It just looks like this...

It's very possible I'm missing something obvious. Thanks so much for your help thusfar. I'm grateful!

Brittany

[alwaysaliberal]

Ok, can I do it by going into command prompt and using taskkill /explorer.exe? And then reopen it by using run?

[delphinium Norton Fighter]

Quads will be along later.  Different time zones.  Try to be patient.

[Quads · Accepted solution]

OK, now the image has been approved

Your Task Manager is in Tiny Footprint Mode

To Click from Tiny Footprint Mode to Regular Mode See screenshots here http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/114377-task-manager-small-footprint-mode.html

Quads

[alwaysaliberal]

Thank-you! It's all fixed, and the antispyware soft is out of my tray! You're awesome, thank-you a ton!