EliteBar Removal Tool Alert: Update V.1.2.2.!!!

or How to Remove SearchMiracle/EliteBar (Alt. 1, Rev. 1)


The thousands of people who are still flocking to the O.D. article How to Remove SearchMiracle/ EliteBar (also known as ETBRUN), and the scores of links to the various O.D. articles on SearchMiracle/EliteBar and related adware/spyware, make it clear that Giancarlo Calo's freeware EliteBar Removal Tool is still the clear means of choice for removing this pest. The removal tool, however, is not limited strictly to SearchMiracle. Calo lists the following variant toolbars that can be removed by this software:

EliteBar (adware toolbar); EliteToolbar (adware toolbar); EliteSidebar (adware toolbar); Browser Aid (adware toolbar); CashToolbar (adware toolbar); SearchMeUp (adware toolbar); navpsrvc.exe (also known as: W32/Forbot-EF, worm); FreshBar (also known as: ADW_FRESHBAR.B, adware).

Recently Calo's Elite Toolbar Remover has received its most powerful endorsement to date. The newest updates of SearchMiracle/EliteBar incorporate code designed specifically to attack the remover:

We, at SimplyTech.it, in early January 2005, released a freeware utility that helped you restore your OS functionality by killing this malware. Since this version 1.0 of our EliteToolbar Remover, the silly guys at EliteToolbar have released some new variants of their malware. The variants in circulation from the end of January 2005, in fact, do a cache detect of the words: "EliteToolbarRemoverV10.zip" which was the old name of our previous version 1.0.

If you are trying to download it from a mirror site you will receive the following error:

''Cannot copy file, Cannot read from file source or disk''

This is not a message from your operating system, but a stupid message from the malware that is actually running in your PC.

The new variants of the malware also completely conceal the presence of the EliteToolbarRemoverV10.exe, so that if you are opening the archive you can only see the readme.doc file that is attached to that and you cannot see the *.exe even if though it is really there! After all, these are very clever programmers, aren't they?

Anyway, it is sure that these people will also blacklist the new name of the zip we are using now, so if this occurs and some new variants will circulate the Internet from today we suggest you to download the software to another PC and take it on a diskette or a USB pendrive and run it on the infected PC in Safe Mode, as usual.

So then, it is vitally important to be sure that you are downloading the latest (EliteToolbar Remover V.1.2.2) version of the remover. It is also important to read the informative Elite Toolbar Remover page at Simply Tech.

The software provided by Simply Tech is entirely freeware. The group offsets it cost as best it can by donations. A PayPal link is provided at the bottom of the Elite Toolbar Remover page. Please help them keep up their fine efforts if you can.



Also see:

• PokaPoka.exe + Nothing = YupSearch (October 19, 2005). What do people mean when they say they have "YupSearch" instead of "EliteBar"?
• Elite Toolbar Remover Information Page (October 17, 2005).
• LQfix Information Page (October 15, 2005) There's a new tool in town!
• How to Remove PokaPoka. (October 12, 2005) Does your EliteBar variant include PokaPoka.exe?
• EliteBar Removal Tool Updates to 2.0.1. (September 21, 2005) The EliteBar Removal Tool now comes in two flavors and two generations!
• SearchMiracle.EliteBar Then and Now (September 21, 2005). Hijacks, heroes, updates and links.
• EliteBar Removal Tool Updates to 2.0.0!!!!! (September 15, 2005). Includes expanded list of infections removed by the removal tool.
• More on Variant ADW_ELITEBAR.D. (May 27, 2005). "It is a standard XP with two top-end commercial anti-virus programs. Moreover, one of the anti-virus programs -- Trend Micro's PC-Cillin -- we already know..."
• Diabolical new EliteBar variant Strikes the Web!!!!or the one the EliteBar Removal Tool can't remove (May 22, 2005).
• EliteBar Removal Tool Updates to 1.3.0!!!!! (May 20, 2005). Includes expanded list of infections removed by the removal tool.
• Adware & Malware Identifier Index (May 9, 2005). "The following is an in-progress index of some of the more common malware toolbars/browser helper objects at large on the Internet."
• HijackThis vs. SearchMiracle/EliteBar (April 11, 2005).

[re: SearchMiracle.EliteBar Search Miracle Elite Bar EliteToolBar Elite Toolbar Elite Tool Bar Elitum ETBrun YupSearch Yup Search.]