For the past few months, I have seen the WinAntivirus and SystemDoctor popup from the IE browser (only on IE) indicating that I have virus on my computer and require to download the software to clean the virus. I have done some research on the Internet. There are many web sites and antivirus forums that shows the solutions. People claim that they made the winantivirus dot com and SystemDoctor dot com popup go away by cleaning system registry and download some software to do post-cleaning. It turns out that those software are also a spyware or so-called grayware. I guess those people post the fake solutions are somehow related to the spyware and grayware. They just kept posting those miss-leading solutions in order to get search engine’s attention.

On my computer, I have trendmicro.com’s PC-cillin Internet Security installed. The version number is 8.000.1001 (build 3.537.00). I have check my system with the antivirus and could not find any spyware or grayware. The interesting thing is that I went to trendmicro.com’s free online tools House Call (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/) web site and run the check. It does found the ADWARE_XLOCATOR and other cookies. The version number shown at the bottom of the house call screen are the same as my PC-cillin antivirus software. How weird is that? PC-cillin did not capture what the house call detect?

After cleaning my system with the free house call online scanning, I have not seen the winantivirus and systemdoctor popup in IE. I usually check the system with trendmicro.com’s free house call online scanning tools to clean any possible virus every months. It gives me an extra protection.

PS. I did research on the other antivirus software, they don’t seem to provide a good and simple solution for removing the spyware and grayware. It’s your common sense not to download any un-trust software even it claims to clean your PC. Yes. I said “clean you PC“. It will clean your data as well. Just be careful what you are doing to your computer.