Pesky programs yet harmless

The topic for today is going to be about malware programs. The one that I am going to feature today is called "Windows Protection Suite". While the name of it sounds so sweetly sincere close to Microsoft products, beware because it's very misleading by it's name. It's harmless yet very annoying and can make people feel the sense of insecurity that their system is being attacked by an actual virus. The truth is that it is not and may end up costing people a little bit of money in the end to have the pesky thing removed when it may not cost a thing.

I remember the first case of this program while I was working at Parker. We spent a little bit of time on the phone with it because there is another legitimate program titled "Windows Defender" which is a valid product of Microsoft. I believe that this particular program is still free.

Here is the symptom of the "Windows Protection Suite" annoyance. Approximately every 5 minutes, it generates this alert window trying to convince you that you have a virus on your system. Then it asks you if you would like to activate the product. If someone attempts to click on it, it may ask for your credit card information which you wouldn't want to give out anyway. While there are many spyware programs out there that try to lure you into spening between 30 to 60 dollars on a legitimate Ad/spyware removal program, there are better ways to get this removed.

I'm not about to give the manual removal of this software because if I did, you are liable to consult your PC technician. Windows Defender which is free has been known to remove this program. There is one step prior to running the scan and that is to stop several processes through the task manager first.

First press the following keys simultaneously: Ctrl + Alt + Del.

Then select "Task Manager"

Click on the Processes Tab

Find the following files: snl2w.exe std.exe
WindowsProtectionSuite.exe
WI345d.exe ppal.exe uninstall.exe
WI345d.exe CLSV.exe

End Process on each one. You can only end them one at a time.

Then run the scan on your adware/spyware removal program of choice and follow the steps given in the program.

This should completely remove this program from your system.