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Danger level 9
Type: Rogue Anti-Spyware
Common infection symptoms:
  • Connects to the internet without permission
  • Slow internet connection
  • System crashes
  • Annoying Pop-up's
  • Slow Computer

HDD Defragmenter

Following the same modus operandi as famous rogue Hardware and Disk Scanners Smart Defragmenter and System Defragmenter, HDD Defragmenter is nothing but a malicious yet cleverly marketed Internet scam. With one goal in mind – tricking consumers out of their money - HDD Defragmenter is not to be trusted. Instead of claiming to be a miracle malware remover as is the case with rogue antispyware, HDD Defragmenter acts a little differently by claiming to fix hardware problems and errors.

The purported hardware errors HDD Defragmenter claim to be able to fix does in reality not exist, and were merely concocted by HDD Defragmenter in an effort to extort money out of the consumer. It will inform the user that it has the ability to fix the problems it reports on; when in fact it has no such capabilities. HDD Defragmenter also makes use of fake security notifications, which are read as follows:

“Requested registry access is not allowed. Registry defragmentation required
Read time of hard drive clusters less than 500 ms
32% of HDD space is unreadable
Bad sectors on hard drive or damaged file allocation table
GPU RAM temperature is critically high. Urgent RAM memory optimization is required to prevent system crash
Drive C initializing error
Ram Temperature is 83 C. Optimization is required for normal operation.
Hard drive does not respond to system commands
Data Safety Problem. System integrity is at risk.
Registry Error – Critical Error”

You can identify an HDD Defragmenter infection by various fake notifications spamming your system. It will state that your hard disk is not accessible or that your system is experiencing numerous problems and require an additional scan. Some programs will still function as normal, but PCs infected with HDD Defragmenter will be unable to launch random executables. HDD Defragmenter will blame it on the following:

“System Error!
Exe file is corrupted and can’t be run. Hard drive scan required.’

“Scan Hard Drive
Windows cannot find ‘notepad’. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search.”

“Critical Error!
Windows was unable to save all the data for the file System32496A8300. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware.”

All of these notifications, along with numerous other distributed by HDD Defragmenter is bogus and without any legitimacy. Do not believe anything this rogue tells you, and remove HDD Defragmenter as a matter of urgency to limit the damage and risk posed to your PC.

Download Spyware Removal Tool to Remove* HDD Defragmenter
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How to manually remove HDD Defragmenter

Files associated with HDD Defragmenter infection:

SearchSettingsProtection.exe
Uninstall HDD Defragmenter.lnk
HDD Defragmenter.lnk
winsp1upd.dll
dfrgr.dat
dfrg.dat
[random].exe
winsp1up.exe

HDD Defragmenter DLL's to remove:

winsp1upd.dll

HDD Defragmenter processes to kill:

SearchSettingsProtection.exe
[random].exe
winsp1up.exe

Remove HDD Defragmenter registry entries:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run "winsp1up.exe"
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run "[random]"
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Comments

  1. RAGHUNATHAN Dec 6, 2010

    Yday night my laptop was attacked with this malware, I want to remove the same.hopfuuly I will be able to do with your guidance

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