Removing Trovi Search Malware
I had another Minecraft-related malware infection today (not my first). One of my hopes with Microsoft buying Minecraft is that they will clean up the installation and run process overall, including creating a good, clean catalog of mods.
This time we ended up with the Trovi “search experience”. I figured out that it was there plugging things up the first time I searched after installing the latest Dalek mod (yeah, that mess of a page is actually the “official” download page). It became clear that it was more insidious, though, when I realized that many AJAX-driven capabilities on pages in Yammer and Hootsuite weren’t working.
When I searched for the tricks to remove Trovi, I got many, many pages that suggested using all sorts of other malware-like tools to remove Trovi.
Sites that give you steps to remove malware almost always tell you to load other malware to do it. Argh.
— Marc D Anderson (@sympmarc) October 6, 2014
While I’m enough of a dummy to get infected with Trovi in the first place, I’m not dumb enough to install other junk which would make it worse.
On a whim, I decided to look at the add-on info in Internet Explorer. Lo and behold, there was a link to the “company’s” Web site. Even more amazing, there was a link right at the bottom of the page to a page with Uninstall instructions. It was downright easy to do once I realized that the program was listed as “Search Protect” in the Windows Control Panel Uninstall Programs list.
This is a case where the suggested treatments were actually worse than the disease. Don’t ever download more junk to fix something unless you really know what that junk really does.