Hello, have a problem (as many may have encountered) using a DVD burner after having had the "Interactual experience"

This must have installed at some point when "the other operator" was at my computer, autorun is turned off on my account, and I do leave my AnyDVD running 24/7. Regardless of whether or not she clicked "yes", it was still installed.

When we realized we could no longer make backups of Happy Feet, etc. (put the original within reach of some in our household, and I give it 10% odds of surviving 8 hours), I tried burning off our .iso copy of it (did I mention small children? this should give you an idea of the burns per month)

Neither Nero nor any other burning program I have would burn a video CD. I did realize that there were 2 separate players installed, and I removed both Interactual Player and PC-Friendly via the Control Panel, add/remove programs.

We still aren't able to back up, and I'm not about to let the original movie get trashed in the family room

What must be done to remove this devil-ware from our system? Thanks in advance . . .

S.

Have you tried going back to a restore point prior to the installation of this software? That would be my first step.

Otherwise you might have to go through the registry and remove any traces of the programs. Run regedit, then Find (Control F) and look for Interactual and PC-Friendly.

You might also want to uninstall and reinstall AnyDVD and your burning programs. And if you don't already use it, this might be a good time to try out ImgBurn for burning your ISO image files.

Cool, thanks for the tip on restore points, unfortunately that is turned off. I can run regedit and search, my worry is there will be obscure things done by it under unobvious reg keys.

I'll try that first, and then the uninstall / reinstall route. The system is only about a month out of the build phase, so worst case I can back up the little bit of data on the system drive, and restore a ghost image.

I just imagine others hit this, and was hoping one of the automated pest removal solution would get rid of this - malware. I understand them trying to stop folks from burning downloads from the net, but I paid for this, and am not going to buy it again, and again . . .

Hi,

to prevent such a mess in future, it is a good idea to use a restricted user account. For testing "suspicious" software, some virtual machine software like MS "Virtual PC" or VmWare is very useful

Michael

It's a good idea Michael, I run ESX @ work. Limited accounts are always a good idea. I'll just say this is a home PC, and if I want harmony, others will have access to it; I just try to inoculate it as best I can

Other than the good security suggestions, is there not any product out that deals with this? That is the goal of my post, and I'm sure that lots of folks have been hit by this as well, since many titles folks own have this Interactual crud

I have my wife on my pc but i have a 13 yr old daughter. I built a new machine that i will use and my wife and kid can use my old build I also have a laptop but my wife and i only use it. I don't know how it's going to work out but i hope it settles some "can i get online now" problems

Hi,Shouldn't be a problem Each one has its own (restricted) account and his/her own virtual machine to play with.
Seems as if this is some rogue software... Formatting and rebuilding isn't any option? I would consider such software as malware, especially if it cannot be removed properly.

Michael
P.S. Just googled for "how to remove interactual player": 21.400 hits

Oh yes, did that multiple ways from Sunday (googling) before signing up for an account and posting. It's full of hits with people saying "upgrade the version of it, and uninstall", and other worthless things. </cry>

Several anti-malware tools have mentioned they find it (one of which, www.spywaredata.com, flagged it in several online reports run by others, but can't find it on the target system now).

It did have an uninstall of course, it just left part of itself behind. I've cleaned up what .reg entries I could find, but I'm guessing there were some posted that were not meant to be so obvious . . .

Ah well, looking like I'll be the 21,401st person to format. May Interactual roast in Hades! [and stuff!]