Computer help needed!

[Pete Lamberty]

Hi! My computer has started to give me this message and I have no idea what it is all about. I am not a person who knows alot about computers but I do okay with them. Here is the message that pops up in a small window every once in a while.

"Site Adv.exe. has generated errors and will be closed by windows. You will need to restart the program. An error log is being created."

Does anyone know what this means? And is there something that I shoud be doing? Is it something that I should worry about? Thanks for your time and any help will be appreciated. Pete

[Joe Pelonio]

Spyware has invaded your machine. If you have any antivirus/spyware/adware programs start scanning now, if not get one or more. This one sends data back to their servers.

[Mike Circo]

Do you have McAffe Antivirus or firewall tools on your system?

This note seems to indicate that that app is part of McAffee

http://www.fbmsoftware.com/spyware-net/process/SiteAdv_exe/3195/

[Frank Fusco]

Heed what Mike and Joe said. A lot of internet scammers use scary messages like that to get you to click on their sites. I use Spyware Doctor. SpyBot Search and Destroy is (pretty) good but does not get everything.

[Pete Lamberty]

Thanks guys for your quick responses. I have McAfee virus protection and personal firewall, I also have PC magazines Spyware Doctor. Since I read your answers I ran Spyware Doctor. It found 24 items that it said are Low risk and I removed them. Right after the Spyware Doctor was finished and I turned it off, the message appeared again. I don't know if this is bad or not. From what all of you are saying, I guess the message is telling me that spyware has been put on my machine. Is this correct?

This problem and a couple of others just started a week or so ago when I downloaded the new and improved McAfee programs. McAfee sent me an email a month or so ago saying basically that they came up with new stuff and since I am a subscriber of theirs I should download their new virus protection and firewall. This may have been a mistake.

Thanks again for all of your help. It puts my mind at ease, at least a little. Pete

[Joe Pelonio]

This could be nothing more than a conflict between McAfee and your other ad/spy/virus programs. It's been my experience that if you have McAfee or Norton they make it hard to run anything else on the same machine. On the other hand it may be an infection. Maybe remove McAfee, reboot and see if it goes away.

[Mike Circo]

Joe has it. The link I supplied earlier indicates that the problimatic program is actually a part of Mcaffee. A conflict with other AV programs is likely. Good news is it is probably not a virus/trojan/spyware, bad news is that it is annoying to deal with.

[Cliff Rohrabacher]

Do a search for "Site Adv.exe" I suspect the space is innacurate. At any rate when you find the file simply rename it with "REM-" in front so it looks like this:

REM-Site Adv.exe

the REM tells the operating system to ignore the file so it can not run. Then run for a few months and see if you get no issues.

Then you can go delete the whole program.

[Jeff Cybulski]

Download Spybot ( free) and install. Then check for updates and after that disconnect and scan. Here's the link.

Jeff

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/

[Alain Tellier]

It is a spyware called ADWare.BargainBuddy. It records your browsing habits and then sends then to the net.

You can get technical details and a removal procedure at this link:

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2003-080112-2214-99&tabid=1

Good luck!

[George Franklis]

Do a search for "Site Adv.exe" I suspect the space is innacurate. At any rate when you find the file simply rename it with "REM-" in front so it looks like this:

REM-Site Adv.exe

the REM tells the operating system to ignore the file so it can not run. Then run for a few months and see if you get no issues.

Then you can go delete the whole program.
While you are correct in general, the "REM" advice is a convolution of an old DOS technique (when editing files like AUTOEXEC.BAT). On modern Windows systems, you can rename the SiteAdv.exe file to anything you want and it will no longer be started by whatever program is starting it. It doesn't have to contain the "REM" prefix.

[Pete Lamberty]

Thanks guys for all of the help. I finally got back on the computer and with your advice and some from a friend I got my computer back to normal. Thanks.