How to remove Essential Cleaner virus

Essential Cleaner is a fake antivirus software which uses misleading methods such fake security alerts, false scan results to trick your into thinking your computer in danger. The rogue hopes that you will next purchase its full (paid) version. Remember, the program is a scam that is unable to detect or remove any viruses, trojans, worms nor will be protect you from legitimate future security threats. Thus, you need remove Essential Cleaner as soon as possible!

Essential Cleaner is distributed through the use of malware that pretends to be flash updates, or even video codecs required to watch an online movie. Once started, it will configure itself to run automatically when Windows starts. Next, the rogue will perform a system scan and report numerous infections to make you think that your computer is infected with trojans, spyware and other malware. Then it will prompt you to pay for a full version of Essential Cleaner to remove these threats. Of course, all of these infections are fake and don’t actually exist on your computer. So you can safely ignore them.

Essential Cleaner blocks most legitimate Windows appications, so that when you will try to run an application, your computer will display a fake security warning that states:

Application cannot be executed. The file {file name} is infected.
Please activate your antivirus software.

More over, Essential Cleaner will display a lot of false security messages, alerts and nag screens. Some of the alerts:

Essential Cleaner
WARNING 38 infections found!!!

Essential Cleaner Warning
Some critical system files of your computer were modified by
malicious program. It may cause system instability and data
loss.

However, like false scan results above, all of these security messages are just a fake and has been displayed to trick you into purchasing so-called full version of Essential Cleaner. You should ignore all of them!

As you can see, the misleading program wants to scare you into thinking your computer is infected with a malware as a method to trick you into purchasing its full version. Do not be fooled into buying it! Instead of doing so, follow the removal guidelines below in order to remove Essential Cleaner and any associated malware from your computer for free.

Symptoms in a HijackThis Log

O4 – HKCU\..\RunOnce: [{RANDOM}] %CommonAppData%\{RANDOM}\{RANDOM}.exe
Note: %CommonAppData% is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data (for Windows XP/2000) or C:\ProgramData (for Windows 7/Vista).

Automatic removal instructions for Essential Cleaner

Step 1. Reboot your computer in Safe mode with networking

Restart your computer.

After hearing your computer beep once during startup, start pressing the F8 key on your keyboard. On a computer that is configured for booting to multiple operating systems, you can press the F8 key when the Boot Menu appears.

Instead of Windows loading as normal, Windows Advanced Options menu appears similar to the one below.

Windows Advanced Options menu

When the Windows Advanced Options menu appears, select Safe mode with networking and then press ENTER.

Step 2. Remove Essential Cleaner associated malware

Download MalwareBytes Anti-malware (MBAM). Close all programs and Windows on your computer.

Double Click mbam-setup.exe to install the application. When the installation begins, keep following the prompts in order to continue with the installation process. Do not make any changes to default settings and when the program has finished installing, make sure a checkmark is placed next to Update Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware, then click Finish.

If an update is found, it will download and install the latest version.

Once the program has loaded you will see window similar to the one below.

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Window

Select Perform Quick Scan, then click Scan, it will start scanning your computer for Essential Cleaner infection. This procedure can take some time, so please be patient.

When the scan is complete, click OK, then Show Results to view the results. You will see a list of infected items similar as shown below. Note: list of infected items may be different than what is shown in the image below.

Malwarebytes Anti-malware, list of infected items

Make sure all entries have a checkmark at their far left and click “Remove Selected” button to remove Essential Cleaner. MalwareBytes Anti-malware will now remove all of associated files and registry keys and add them to the programs’ quarantine. When MalwareBytes Anti-malware has finished removing the infection, a log will open in Notepad and you may be prompted to Restart.

Step 3. Reset HOSTS file
Essential Cleaner will change the Windows system HOSTS file so you need reset this file with the default version for your operating system.

Please download OTM by OldTimer from here and save it to desktop. Run OTM, copy, then paste the following text in “Paste Instructions for Items to be Moved” textarea (under the yellow bar):

:Commands
[resethosts]

Click the red Moveit! button. Close OTM.

Essential Cleaner removal notes

Note 1: if you can not download, install, run or update Malwarebytes Anti-malware, then follow the steps: Malwarebytes won`t install, run or update – How to fix it.

Note 2: if you need help with the instructions, then post your questions in our Spyware Removal forum.

Note 3: your current antispyware and antivirus software let the infection through ? Then you may want to consider purchasing the FULL version of MalwareBytes Anti-malware to protect your computer in the future.

Essential Cleaner creates the following files and folders

%CommonAppData%\{RANDOM}
%CommonAppData%\{RANDOM}\{RANDOM}.exe
Note: %CommonAppData% is C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data (for Windows XP/2000) or C:\ProgramData (for Windows 7/Vista).

Essential Cleaner creates the following registry keys and values

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunOnce\{RANDOM}