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I’ve seen a lot of smitfraud spyware/malware infections lately and thought it might be a good idea to share the easiest way to remove the annoying piece of junk that intentionally slows down your PC. These instructions require little technical knowledge and can be completed by most anyone. It is advisable to to have an experienced computer technician to do it, though, in case there are complications.

There are three indicators to alert you to smitfraud’s presence on your system and you will have no trouble recognizing them. First, you will be inundated with windows that pop up with generic warnings about “virus activity” being detected on your computer and instructions to get “recommended antispyware software”. (conveniently some versions will recommend software, that you have to pay for to get it removed, nice, feature, huh?) Second, you will have a red circular icon in your taskbar, with an X through it and it will be blinking. Third, your computer will grind to a halt. Additional indicators may vary by the version of smitfraud that got onto your system.

Here are two of the warnings you may receive: (note: the verbiage may be different)

1. the first action to take, would be to print these instructions so you will have a copy, as this process requires rebooting your PC.
2. download this Smitfraud fix program to your C: drive.
3. reboot your PC and boot into Safe Mode. This is accomplished by pressing F8 immediately prior to the Windows boot logo, but right after your computer manufacturer’s boot logo. Generally, it’s right after your computer beeps while booting.
4. when logging into safe mode, be sure to login as user you normally login as, if the user has administrative privileges on the computer. If the user doesn’t, just login as administrator.
5. run Smitfraudfix from your desktop and select option 2 to clean your system.
6. after removing infected files, the tool will prompt for registry cleaning, choose Y and press enter to clean it up.

In my experience this excellent tool has been 100% successful in removing smitfraud. If your computer is exhibiting the symptoms described above, you may be infected and should investigate immediately to prevent further malware infestations on your PC. After you have removed smitfraud, run Spybot to clean up any remnants.