How to Remove iPumper Malware, Adware, Spamware, Whatever You Want to Call It

For the last month or so there has been some kind of malware of adaware that has been annoying the crap out of me.  I keep getting this pop-up about a program called “iPumper” that launches and tries to get me to install some kind of pseudo update.  Unfortunately I deleted it before I got a chance to take a screen shot but believe me, you’ll know it when you see it.  It pops up as a program but it will be nowhere in your Start Menu nor in Programs & Features. I have no idea where it came from but it seems to come from software as a background program.  But here’s how to remove it.

1. Delete it from Windows Task Scheduler.  It puts itself there to run automatically every night.  To delete it from your scheduler assuming you don’t already have Computer Management icon, click Start, and in search type in “Computer Management”.  Open the Task Scheduler and you’ll see it listed there as “Escolade”.  Just right-click and delete it.
2. Next go delete these two directories by just browsing to them: (you will have to enable Windows to show all hidden files if you cannot find the AppData directory)

   1. C:UsersYOURUSERNAMEAppDataRoamingExpressFiles
   2. C:UsersYOURUSERNAMEAppDataRoamingiPumper

3. Then delete all files in C:WindowsTemp. If it cannot delete all of them that’s fine.  All these are trash files anyway.
4. Dump your Recycle Bin
5. Go to Start, Run, and type in Regedit. Do click Edit, Find and type in escolade; Delete all instances of Escolde found
6. Reboot & it’s gone

I don’t know where this program came from, but I am suspecting it came from one of those free software sites like Softpedia or Cnet that makes you download a downloader to download their software.  I don’t think it came from either of those two but it came from another site like it that uses a program called “Anyfiledownloader” or something like that.  Either way, it’s annoying and I suspect it was trying to install software to my laptop but my firewall kept blocking it.  Either way it seems to be permanently gone now after I did all that above; took a few days of me troubleshooting my computer, but it has’t popped up since.

As always run a full virus scan, adware and malware scan to make sure nothing else on your computer is detected. Cheers!