Forums General Discussion Generic Pup.j

Hi

Good day to you.

This morning My Mcafee Program scans this Generic Pup.j ( 3 files ) in the mirc as potentially unwanted program. I tried to delete it but cant.

I appreciate if someone could help me.

Thanks.

Did you purposely install mIRC? If so, then you can ignore McAfee and set mIRC as "safe". A "PUP" (Potentially Unwanted Program) is not necessarily a bad thing. It just means that the program in question may be bad if it isn't something you meant to install and use. If you installed it on purpose, then it is perfectly safe to use and you can ignore the warning.

Of course, if you didn't install mIRC and it just appeared from some other program installation or whatever, then you should remove it even if you think you might want to use it. It's better to remove it if it was installed without your knowledge and then install a new copy from here to prevent any possible virus issues.

As for removing it, make sure it isn't running. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to open the Task Manager. Click the Processes tab and search for any filename starting with "mIRC". Click any that you find and click the End Process button and say OK. Then try removing it. If you still have problems, boot into safe mode and try again.

Hi Riamus2

Thanks for your advice.

Actually I have been using MIRC program for sometime. So far, Mcafee scans doesn't show this problem till this morning and I check at mcafee website, it was detected two months back and just place it in its dat engine recently. I was just worried it might be a back door program for trojan.

Generic pup.j was found in 3 files, ie 2 files in c:\programe files\mirc\mirc.exe and 1 file in c:\system volume information\_restore

Should I just leave it alone?

Appreciate for your help.

As long as that is the version of mIRC you know you're using, yes, ignore it. The system restore is just there because there's a "copy" that is being detected in there.

I haven't had McAfee throw that at me recently, but I probably already have mIRC set as safe or else I disabled checking for PUPs. Anyhow, it is only unsafe if you use it unsafely. Obviously, you can get viruses/trojans/etc. by using mIRC if you're not careful (such as downloading things from untrusted sources, typing things that people tell you to type without knowing what it does, running unknown and untrusted scripts, etc). But if you don't do that sort of thing, it's as safe as any other internet application (and safer than some).

Basically, a PUP isn't a danger as long as you trust the program.

Well, it wouldn't have found 2 files in c:\program files\mirc\mirc.exe as the exe is a single file. It might have found two file in c:\program files\mirc

Since you've been using mIRC for a while, it's safe to mark the 2 in the mIRC directory as safe. Regarding the one in c:\system volume information\_restore, check the file name and see if you have a version of that file that matches or is higher than the one in the restore directory. If you do, and it's a program that you installed, then it's safe to mark it as safe as well.

For the most part, the files in c:\system volume information\_restore are only used to maintain a restore point in Windows XP. I's say, that probably 90% of the time it'll never be used, but if you need to use a restore point, that's what it's there for.

Hi

Thanks for all your advice.

I used online scans to check my pc. Everything seems fine. I guess this program is ok.

Thanks! I really appreciate for all the advice.