System Defragmenter Removal Process
Again this is a guide for one of my customers. Credit firstly where its due and that goes to Bleeping Computer where this original guide comes from. Click here to see the original post..
What this infection does:
System Defragmenter is a fake computer defragmenter that hijacks your computer and does not allow you to use it properly. System Defragmenter pretends to be a computer error repair and optimization program that scans your hard drives and memory for problems. When installed System Defragmenter will be configured to start automatically when you login to Windows. Once started, it will display numerous error messages when you attempt to launch programs or delete files. It will then prompt you to scan your computer with the program, which will state that there are a variety of errors that it cannot fix until you purchase the program. As this program is a scam do not be scared into purchasing the program when you see its alerts.
While System Defragmenter you will also not be able to launch any executables on your computer as the program will say they are corrupted. When you attempt to run them it will display the following message:
System Error!
Exe file is corrupted and can’t be run. Hard drive scan required.
Scan Hard Drive
It should be noted that if you attempt to run a program enough times it will eventually work. When you perform the scan or use the fake defragmenter it will state that there are numerous problems on your computer, but that you first need to purchase it before it can fix any of them. Some examples of the fake problems it detects on your computer are:
Read time of hard drive clusters less than 500 ms
32% of HDD space is unreadable
Hard drive does not respond to system commands
Bad sectors on hard drive or damaged file allocation table
Drive C initializing error
Ram Temperature is 83 C. Optimization is required for normal operation.
Data Safety Problem. System integrity is at risk.
Requested registry access is not allowed. Registry defragmentation required
Registry Error – Critical Error
GPU RAM temperature is critically high. Urgent RAM memory optimization is required to prevent system crash
While SystemDefragmenter is running it will also display fake alerts from your Windows taskbar. These alerts are designed to further scare you into thinking that your computer has an imminent hardware failure. The text of some of the alerts you may see include:
Critical Error
Hard Drive not found. Missing hard drive.
Critical Error
RAM memory usage is critically high. RAM memory failure.
Critical Error
Windows can’t find hard disk space. Hard drive error
Critical Error!
Damaged hard drive clusters detected. Private data is at risk.
Critical Error!
Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \System32\496A8300. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware.
Critical Error
A critical error has occurred while indexing data stored on hard drive. System restart required.
System Restore
The system has been restored after a critical error. Data integrity and hard drive integrity verification required.
Just like the fake corruption messages and fake scan results, these alerts are only designed to scare you into purchasing the program.
As you can see, the warnings issued by this program are all fake, and once you realize that, the alerts become more of a nuisance rather than a concern. Therefore, do not purchase System Defragmenter for any reason, and if you already have, please contact your credit card company and state that the program is a computer infection and a scam and that you would like to dispute the charge. To remove this infection and related malware, please follow the steps in the guide below.
Automated Removal Instructions for System Defragmenter using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware:
1. Print out these instructions as we may need to close every window that is open later in the fix.
2. It is possible that the infection you are trying to remove will not allow you to download files on the infected computer. If this is the case, then you will need to download the files requested in this guide on another computer and then transfer them to the infected computer. You can transfer the files via a CD/DVD, external drive, or USB flash drive.
3. Before we can do anything we must first end the processes that belong to System Defragmenter so that it does not interfere with the cleaning procedure. To do this, download the following file to your desktop.
4. Once it is downloaded, double-click on the rkill.com in order to automatically attempt to stop any processes associated with System Defragmenter and other Rogue programs. Please be patient while the program looks for various malware programs and ends them. When it has finished, the black window will automatically close and you can continue with the next step. If you get a message that rkill is an infection, do not be concerned. This message is just a fake warning given by System Defragmenter when it terminates programs that may potentially remove it. If you run into these infections warnings that close Rkill, a trick is to leave the warning on the screen and then run Rkill again. By not closing the warning, this typically will allow you to bypass the malware trying to protect itself so that rkill can terminate System Defragmenter . So, please try running Rkill until the malware is no longer running. You will then be able to proceed with the rest of the guide. If you continue having problems running rkill.com, you can download iExplore.exe or eXplorer.exe, which are renamed copies of rkill.com, and try them instead.
Do not reboot your computer after running rkill as the malware programs will start again.
5. Now you should download Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, or MBAM, from the following location and save it to your desktop:
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware Download Link (Download page will open in a new window)
6. Once downloaded, close all programs and Windows on your computer, including this one.
7. Double-click on the icon on your desktop named mbam-setup.exe. This will start the installation of MBAM onto your computer.
8. When the installation begins, keep following the prompts in order to continue with the installation process. Do not make any changes to default settings and when the program has finished installing, make sure you leave both the Update Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware checked. Then click on the Finish button. If MalwareBytes’ prompts you to reboot, please do not do so.
9. MBAM will now automatically start and you will see a message stating that you should update the program before performing a scan. As MBAM will automatically update itself after the install, you can press the OK button to close that box and you will now be at the main program as shown below.
10. On the Scanner tab, make sure the the Perform full scan option is selected and then click on the Scan button to start scanning your computer for System Defragmenter related files.
11. MBAM will now start scanning your computer for malware. This process can take quite a while, so we suggest you go and do something else and periodically check on the status of the scan. When MBAM is scanning it will look like the image below.
12. When the scan is finished a message box will appear as shown in the image below.
You should click on the OK button to close the message box and continue with the SystemDefragmenter removal process.
13. You will now be back at the main Scanner screen. At this point you should click on the Show Results button.
14. A screen displaying all the malware that the program found will be shown as seen in the image below. Please note that the infections found may be different than what is shown in the image.
You should now click on the Remove Selected button to remove all the listed malware. MBAM will now delete all of the files and registry keys and add them to the programs quarantine. When removing the files, MBAM may require a reboot in order to remove some of them. If it displays a message stating that it needs to reboot, please allow it to do so. Once your computer has rebooted, and you are logged in, please continue with the rest of the steps.
15. When MBAM has finished removing the malware, it will open the scan log and display it in Notepad. Review the log as desired, and then close the Notepad window.
16. You can now exit the MBAM program.