Pest Patrol - behaves like adware and unclean uninstall

I installed Pest Patrol a while ago. Run it once, it found a couple of cookies and false positives. I then forgot about it, or so I thougth.

Very surprisingly, if the computer was not attended it started IE with some site of the CA company. This is one of the reasons you run anti-spyware to avoid, very disappointing.

I tried uninstalling it the standard way. However, it still left behind tons of stuff in it's C:\Program Files\Computer Associates\ folder. And one process was still in autorun, namely caissdt.exe, taking up 9 244 kB of memory according to taskmanager. Killing it however seems to not have ill effects and I could manually remove the files it left behind and the registry keys I found.

I think it's amazing someone would think of making anti-spyware with malware like behavior.

 

At this point, Pest Patrol is an also ran, IMHO. Once you've cleaned it out of your system, try SUPERAntiSpyware. (http://www.superantispyware.com/) It has a Pro (or paid) version that has excellent and light on access detection of a multitude of malware. There is also a freeware version that may serve your needs.

 

IMO, CA has lost it's way in the anti-malware game. I stopped using CA antivirus once they moved from the early version 7 EZ Antivirus builds. They made a very wrong turn (went monster bloatware) and I no longer consider them as an option... Very sad as they once offered an excellent, low impact product.

 

Yes, in fact I'm using primarily the free version of SAS, have tried a couple of anti-spywares and have others installed as well. I would have kept PP if it didn't behave like malware with it's IE-popups, and then refusing to uninstall, that's unacceptable..

And btw. That 10 MB caisstd.exe that's left behind after the uninstall is the one causing the popups, so uninstalling doesn't make the popups go away, at least it did not for me. Are they trying to fool unexperienced users to buy their software the same way malware/rogue authors do? Not nice at all, I hope I was unlucky and this is not their way of doing business.

Also, caisstd.exe has a tray icon. You can't exit by right clicking it, you have to kill it using task manager.

 

I think I am seeing things, go to buy in pestpatrol.com and pest patrol is $1.00!! Not even a dollar would I buy pest patrol...

 

Well the guy who does the respected rogue list of antispyware, names Pest Patrol has one of the trustworthy ones, together with Spybot and ad-ware, and SAS etc

You guys badmouthing pest patrol clearly have no clue what you are talking about...

 

Strange... I hear this every day, all the time!

 

yeah me too. That is why I prefer to write it up on a webpage/wiki. When I do that everyone takes it as gospel... But i say the same thing on a forum, people tell me I don't know what i'm talking about (at least until they google and find the webpage/wiki on it) ... Funny how that works...

 

Yup, it says one dollar. I assume it is a mistake. How much does it cost a company to process one order?

 

I recall using Pest Patrol many years ago and surprised their still pushing it after all the issues customers complained over time and again. Personally it ranks along the likes of Ad-Aware SE 2007 or whatever, products that have passed their prime in usefulness.

This is no knock for the sake of downplaying their ability, they have sorely needed complete overhauls for a very long time but instead always come back with basically the same previous performances as before.

 

Hi, Shunted:

To completely uninstall such a nasty app as PestPatrol, you may need to:

Using Windows' add/remove or PestPatrol's own uninstaller in Safe Mode,

After reboot into normal mode, try registry cleaner and then followed by registry editor's search function. You may have to delete registry leftovers each by each manually,

Good luck.

 

I tried the crippled trial version of PP, it found nothing like all the other scanners I tried. Then I did a Freeze Previous and a reboot in order to uninstall PP completely as if it was never there.

 

I tried searching through the files (i backed them up) for the ca.com address. Only internet addresses i found were to VeriSign. Tried Windows folder too without luck. So I suppose they are obfuscated or something.

But I am quite confident PP is the one responsible for the popups, I mean, why would a spyware author try to get me buy PP from the www.ca.com page (no hosts hijack)? When I saw this the first time I thought I had an infection, but neither PP or Spybot and Adaware found anything, this was the tools I used back then. Also, killing the caisstd.exe process makes the problem go away..... I have uploaded it (aswell as the other files I identified as related to PP) to virustotal.com and it finds no problems.

As for the unclean uninstall, there are two other users having the same problem in this Wilders thread: Impossible to remove PestPatrol. Another forum, last post in 2007: here. It's mostly just removed from Add/remove programs, reg keys and most files are left, and it loads with every reboot...

 

Enters again the Whipping boy.

PP is as much a joke as Ad-Aware whatever version. I took a spin recently on the forums there and i cannot believe the amount of users of a product that seem to draw malware like a magnet. And the answer for those users is almost always (95%) PLEASE DOWNLOAD COMBOFIX here and so the beat goes on.

I would stay galaxies away from products like these that do absolutely nothing for real protection and rarely able to detect anything that poses a serious disruption to PC users good machines.

When i had PP on my then Windows 98SE box it was a devil of a time removing leftovers. Just doesn't make sense that these dealers of their crafts haven't yet learned to help their customers/users by building into their toys at least a FULL safe uninstall.

 

When FDISR-users install a software to try, we can uninstall it after trying without any leftovers. Non-FDISR-users have to depend on the classical tools to uninstall a software, like Add/Remove programs ... with possible leftovers.

 

The best uninstaller is an ISR software,yes.
FDISR,Rollback Rx or any other that works on your system.
Also a reboot to restore like DeepFreeze and others that work that way should do the same job.
As for pest Patrol, I remember this long ago and it was crap then.Would never try it now,Too many other far superior security software out there to be messing will ones like PP.

 

freeatlast, handle for an author of the program Dll-Fix, if you remember SWI Forums, said in chat discussions with me long ago, that things had reached a point with malware that even the best conceived manual fixes that had to come in after commercial antispyware apps had reached their limits, had reached such limitations whereas concerned fully cleaning the XP registry of malware infected entries, that it had virtually turned into a total waste of good time & effort. She said there remained no program available that could fully remove all the bombardments left even after the active malware had been disabled. I take it she was something of a very neat & orderly type that prided on a "clean" machine.

You Eric, in employing the fd-isr FROZEN snapshot boot-to-restore would have recovered her faith that such a method is not only entirely possible but is active on many users set ups now.