Removing Dell My Way Search Assistant; question regarding Avast Virus Chest

Hi everyone:

SuperAntiSpyware has been notifying me about Dell My Way Search Assistant files. SAS showed a DESRCAS.DLL file in the My Way Search Assistant folder as well as some registry entries. This has confused me since Avast has already placed the file called DESRCAS.DLL in the Chest and the My Way Search Assistant folder is empty (even with show hidden files enabled). Because SuperAntiSpyWare keeps finding these files, I decided to follow the recommendations of SpiritSongs, restore the file from the Chest to the original folder, and follow some instructions on a Dell forum which basically says to go through Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs and IF the program still shows in Add-Remove list but now without the “remove” icon showing, to then use the Windows Cleaner Utility available from Microsoft.

http://www.dellcommunity.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=si_virus&message.id=42328

I restored the DESRCAS.DLL file and indeed it appeared back in the My Way Search Assistant folder BUT it still was showing as present in the chest even after refreshing the chest. I proceeded with Remove program from Control Panel; Avast scans and SuperAntiSpyWare scans show no evidence of any Dell My Way Search Assistant files.

The Add/Remove Programs under Control panel no longer shows the Dell My Way Search Assistant program so I guess I don’t need to use the Windows Cleaner Utility.

Does restoring a file from the chest restore the file to the original folder from where it was originally removed and leave a “copy” remaining in the chest? I was expecting it be completely removed from the chest with no file remaining in the chest. It appears the only thing I can do is to actually use the delete function to remove it from the chest.

Two other interesting things happened during the Remove Program process. My guess is that both events were reasonable and everything is fine but perhaps someone can confirm…

  1. Right after I launched the Remove Progam feature in Control Panel, Avast showed a popup message indicating a .rbl adware file was “found” in my C:/Config.Msi folder. I ignored the message and later went to the this folder. There was no such .rbl file showing. I guess this was some sort of temporary file made during the uninstall process that Avast spotted but Windows ended up deleting by the end of the process.
  2. During a complete Avast scan of my pc after all this, adware was found with file name: C:/system volume information/_restore[file name here]. I can only guess this was some Windows Restore file related to the My Way dll file that had been in the Avast chest. I ignored any action on this file, let the scan complete, and then turned off Windows Restore, did a boot scan, and the boot.txt file shows zero infected files now.

Yes a copy will remain in the chest. If you don’t want the file, delete it.

All system restore points will be removed when you disable system restore and reboot. Any new ones you create will be fine.

Maybe… It will be good a boot time scanning with avast again.

Like oldman said, it will remain there, safely, into the Chest. If you want to remove it, just delete it within the Chest.

Another reason to run a boot time scanning as you’ve done… virus replication.

Thank you oldman and Tech. I thought maybe there was something wrong when the file was still in the chest AND it had restored the file to the original folder…

but… sure enough, Avast knows what it is doing!