ericb

I didn't know about the MBAM vs ASC thing, nor do I care. I am mostly self taught but did get an AS degree in Information Systems Tech later on on Trade Act (mainly to use the free education to finish an incomplete Engineering degree) I know a little, wish I knew what some of you know, and would be a genius if I knew half of what some of you claim to know. (Who is whom, right?) I relied on Advanced Windows Care long ago, thought it was good and I thought ASC was still relevant and useful. I've never experienced anything bad that I could trace back to ASC. Keep in mind, I do know a little and when you play in poop, it is likely gonna make you stink (I feel that I am careful = I stay away from sites that throw up 30 pop-ups, where some morons think that blocking the pop-ups instantly makes the first site safe) I stopped here because MBAM quarantined all my ASC and I wanted to read why. Found a great deal of interesting talk, opinions, crap, etc. Are Registry Cleaners really bad? I don't know now. I've used them in the past with success, usually to easily remove a rouge process that tries to run in the background when the parent software is long gone. Also, because I don't trust myself to manually remove the registry value that calls it up. You know, family member wants you to fix their PC .... after pre-installed McAfee expired, they installed Norton and didn't like it, then bought Trend-Micro or something and the BSOD appears when they try to install it. This is one true example, though the order and program names may not be accurate. None of the software was ever UNinstalled, yet each package after the first removed what it needed to install itself, leaving a mess. ASC Registry fixed all the leftover remnants but the first preinstalled garbage (finally reinstalled that one using Dell Service Tag to get the correct version with proper uninstaller) I'm sure one of you could offer a much easier process, which might help me in the future. Point of my rambling .... thought registry cleaning was okay. Thought ASC was okay. Always use MBAM first when I suspect malware .... this is the first time I had it attack ASC but I get it (understand the potential thing by definition) .... guess I have always just used the free version. I do networking for an ISP now and run away when family mentions a computer problem. Thank you for the detailed fix and humorous back and forth debating in this thread and others.