PCTech Forums

I recently went into Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel and found that about 3/4 of the items were no longer there. One item in particular though stood out as I had never seen it before. There is now a file called "Booger" and I have no idea where it came from. It shows today's date as the date last used. The last thing I did before I noticed this was to install Driver Cleaner v1.4 and then I was going to remove and update my nVidia driver. Could this possibly be the result of some kind of virus? Has anyone ever heard of this before? I'm afraid to remove it without knowing what it is. I'm running Norton Antivirus with automatic updates and the free version of Zone Alarm monitors my cable connection.

Here's an image of my Add/Remove Programs page:




Also, is there any way to retrieve my missing program items, short of reinstalling everything?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I do not believe this is a virus. Did you use any clean up programs? Sometimes this can cause similar problems. The Booger thing is probably something you downloaded and installed from a webpage. My guess is that it would be safe to uninstall. You should really get a virus protection up and running.

That's just it. I haven't downloaded and/or installed from the net other than the program I mentioned above; Driver Cleaner v1.4. Also I've had Norton Antivirus running in the background the whole time. Anyhow, I'm mostly concerned with getting the other 60 or so items back. Anyone know if there's a way to do that?

The uninstall info is stored in the registry - the easiest way of getting this back is therefore to use system restore to go back to an older point