Remove Rogueware with ESET Rogue Applications Remover (ERAR)

ESET, the leading security company from Slovakia, has introduced a new rogueware removal tool called ERAR which is short for ESET Rogue Applications Remover. This tool is a standalone application for Windows and can help you remove rogueware. Rogueware is rogue security software that masquerades as a real security software (anti-virus or anti-malware) and deceives the user by showing that it can remove viruses, trojans and malware only if you pay for it. There are hundreds of such known rogueware like XP Antivirus 2012, Internet Security 2012 and more.

ESET Rogue Applications Remover is available for all versions of Windows XP, Vista, 7 and 8. It supports both the 32-bit editions and the 64-bit editions (downloads are available separately for both). The download is not very large either – its just 2.2 megabytes for the 32-bit edition and 2.9 megabytes for the 64-bit edition. Although, you can just double-click on the downloaded file (ERARemover_x86.exe in my case), but you can run it from a command prompt for more options. For more command line switches and options, it should be run from within an elevated command prompt. You can learn how to open an elevated command prompt in Windows Vista and 7 here. When it runs for the first time, you have to accept the end user license agreement (EULA) before you can start the scanning process.

Remove Rogueware with ESET Rogue Applications Remover (ERAR)

It detects for an active internet connection for using its cloud virus database. It can work without an active internet connection but without the internet connection its detection rate might go down a little bit. After this, it initializes and performs a preliminary cleanup, followed by a ten phase scan of your system. After the scan, it verifies the entries against data downloaded from ESET research labs. In the end it tells you if your system is infected or rogue free. The whole process takes less than a minute for a clean system. If it detects one or more rogue applications, then it will use various techniques to stop them and delete their files. On an infected system, it would take many minutes for cleaning up the infected files.

Remove Rogueware with ESET Rogue Applications Remover (ERAR)

If you are an advanced user, then you can also run this application from an elevated command prompt to make use of the supported command line switches. The options include switches -r to restore changes, -a to restore all changes, -c to cleanup program data, -s to run ERAR silently and more. The silent switch -s can be quite effective for automatic removal of rogue applications from your computer.

ESET Rogue Applications Remover can be used to remove rogue applications from your Windows system. It is very simple to use and analyzes many different areas of your system where rogueware usually hide. This tool is geared more towards advanced users but everyone can give it a try to clean their PC. This tool does not seem to have any update feature, so you have to download this tool, every time you use it, from the ESET website – so that you use the latest version.

You can download ESET Rogue Applications Remover from http://kb.eset.com/.