Forums General Discussion How do I uninstall this program?

I don't know how it got onto my PC, it appeared during an installation of a completely different program and I don't want it. Here's what happened:

At the bottom right hand corner of my icon bar, there was a blank spot. I right clicked it and it had all of these settings and other things. I went to uninstall, but it told me I had to turn the program off first. Unfortunately, whenever I go to close the program, it will reopen 1 second later and open up 9 or so Internet Explorer browsers with a final message telling me that "The path 'Alex116' does not exist or is not a directory".

I thought whatever this thing was it was probably an installation error, so that's why I couldn't get the program off my PC. I came here and downloaded the program (Quebec version, not that I'd think it matters too much) and went to install in properly in hopes I could then uninstall properly. This was not the case. Now I have TWO blank spaces on my icon bar both do to with this program.

I tried turning the "Connect on startup" setting off, so it wouldn't open in the first place, but it still does open when I log in then out of my account. Even when I reboot it will run.

This is unbearably frustrating to me, so any help getting this program off my PC would be greatly appreciated.

Try going to add/remove programs (start -> control panel -> Add or Remove programs), and look for "mIRC".
You should also get someone to help you removing the autorun from the registry.
You can also search for "mIRC.exe" on your harddrive, and tell us what file names are in the folder, incase it installed itself in a windows directory.

Also, this program should not start on its own. It also doesn't start up again when you close it. It looks like you downloaded it from a malicious site/mirror.

I already tried the add and remove programs thing. It won't let me remove the program unless it's closed... and it won't close

As for the location, the mIRC.exe file is in the Windows\System32 directory. Now how do I go about deleting the auto-run registry?

mIRC usually installs to c:\mIRC, or c:\program files\mIRC, so if it's in System32\ I think you've likely caught a virus that uses mIRC.

You can remove the startup entry by going to start menu, run, then type in "msconfig", go to the "Startup" tab, find "mIRC.exe" or similar in the list (it may not be named mIRC if it was installed by something else, so you'll need to find the process name), then untick it and click on ok/apply, then restart your computer when prompted. I would try ending the process before you do this though, as it could just make it start up again every time you try to remove it.

I would try virus scanning your computer with a couple of antiviruses and antispyware applications as if it is a virus, it may have installed more than just mIRC. If it's starting up straight after closing, it may be that there are two processes - one that appears in the tray (mIRC), and another than makes sure mIRC is always running. This will be more difficult to take care of manually, so I suggest the virus scanning option.

Out of curiosity, if it's not too private, what were you trying to download? That may give us more of a clue about why it has installed a copy of mIRC to the system32 directory.

In the meantime, don't do any online banking or log into any important/private websites.

I got rid of it!

I logged on and off, then I quickly ended the process before it disappeared off the process list. All I had to do was uninstall, and it worked.

Thanks for the suggestions and help guys

@Hixxy

It was some Super Internet TV thing I was getting from uTorrent. The mIRC must have been included in the package without me knowing what it was... Anyways, the problem is solved now.

Just for the record, it wasn't a virus... or at least one that Norton couldn't pick up.

Norton doesn't pick up a lot :P

I won't start an antivirus war though. Glad you sorted it