Clean Computer to Prevent System Breakage – Windows Accelerator Pro Virus

In the recent past I received an email from someone that was wondering what he should do about the following pop-up.

SystemBreakage

Microsoft Antivirus has found critical process activity on your PC. You need to clean your computer to prevent the system breakage.

Before I got a chance to email him back, he hit OK on that pop-up. He then received this pop-up.

FakeAVmessage

Take note of the misspelling of the word, might.

I quickly emailed him back and told him that it was a fake anti-virus message. If he would have clicked clean computer, he would probably have gotten infected. I told him to run a full scan with his antivirus software. Thankfully, he wasn’t infected.

I decided I would have a little fun with this virus. I have a virtual machine for technical purposes, so I decided I would try to infect my virtual machine with this virus. I found the website that was infected. malware ahead

I soon downloaded a malicious script from the website and I was infected with the virus. Here are a couple screenshots of the Windows Accelerator Pro virus.

Fake Security Center

It tried to pose as a legit anti-virus, security software.     AV3

The virus tries to force you to pay for its “anti-virus protection”Payment Required

Here is how I removed Windows Accelerator Pro. 

Step One: I started the computer and hit F8 until I got to the screen that I chose Safe Mode with Command Prompt.  Note: Safe Mode and Safe Mode with Networking will still allow the virus to work and you can’t get around it.

Step Two: I typed explorer in the command prompt.

I have met a couple other viruses similar to this one and a common place to store the executable file is C:\ Users\<Username\AppData\Roaming. I decided to browse to that location using Windows Explorer and sure enough there was a weird file called guard-sald there. I removed that file and another file called GDIPFONTCACHEV1.DAT.  I then browsed to C:\ Users\<Username\AppData\Local and removed a file called result1.

Attn: Your virus file names may be different than these. I am just stating what worked for me. To make sure you don’t mess up the Windows file structure, by deleting something good, I would encourage you to cut and paste your virus files to the desktop. I pasted my viruses to the desktop and they didn’t start, at start-up since they weren’t in their correct folders.

I then rebooted the computer.

Step Three: I started Windows normally and it came up fine. I downloaded Malwarebytes and Malwarebytes Anti-RookitBeta 

removal

Show Results

Remove Viruses

I removed the viruses and malware these programs found and I was back in business. 

This was posted by techspeeder.

 

 

2 thoughts on “Clean Computer to Prevent System Breakage – Windows Accelerator Pro Virus

    1. Merlin Halteman Post author

      Hello Jenny, I am glad you found my article helpful. As far as the question on detecting viruses on your computer. The best and by far the easiest way to find viruses is to scan your computer with an antivirus software. You can also use tools like Autoruns and Process Monitor to see what services and files are running or starting up. However,I would use some caution with these tools since it can be difficult to distinguish between a good service and a virus sometimes. Hope this helps.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.