how to remove task processes?

[adwarehater]

hello to all. i am trying to remove certain adware and spyware programs from my pc that i find running on my task manager. there are some that ive been able to uninstall pretty easily but some just wont go away. some like "optimize.exe" and "iexplore.exe" tell me that access is denied when i try to delete them from the folder they are installed in...others i delete go away and then reappear no more than two or three seconds after they disappear. question is..is there a way to manually remove these things? or do i have to buy software that will do this for me? if so..any suggestions as to which software does a thorough job of removing these evil programs? thanks in advance for your help with this matter.

[PrairieDawg]

Re: how to remove task processes?

Have you tried the two most common (and free) programs for wiping out adware and spyware ? Ad-aware http://www.lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware/ and Spybot S&D http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/ do a great job of wiping some of the more common problems. A-Squared http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/ is a good and free trojan hunter.

[Yawgm0th]

Re: how to remove task processes?

Agreed with Prariedawg... Also get AVG from my sig if you don't have a virus scanner.

In some people's opinion, iexplore.exe is a truly evil process. That depends on whether or not you like Internet Explorer. :) Unless, of course, it's an iexplore.exe located somewhere other than C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer, in which case it may very well be a virus or piece of spyware.

Anyway, to get rid of them here's what you should do:
First, open up msconfig or use hijackthis (in sig, hell try it anyway) and remove any offending programs from the list in the startup tab. Then, open up services.msc and make sure there aren't any potentially-malicious services in there. If there is, it's likely to have a security-related name to throw you off, such 'Network Security" or something like that.
After you've removed the startup and/or service entries, restart the computer and go into safe mod. Once there, find and delete the files themselves. If this doesn't do it and you didn't screw it up, the next option may be too difficult to explain. Try that and the above-mentioned programs and get back to us.