Remove Safety Defender

Oscar Sodani is a founder of Help2Go and owner of Help2Go Networks, an IT consulting firm in the Washington D.C. area. Oscar holds the CISSP certification as well as industry certifications from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell.

Safety Defender is a "rogue" anti-spyware program, meaning that it issues false information about your system, all in the hope that you will purchase the "real" version of Safety Defender, which of course costs money. It's a scam. Here's how to remove it.

(Note: You should print this page out before continuing)

To remove Safety Defender, you'll need a tool called smitRem.exe

Download smitRem.exe  

Once you have downloaded the file, double-click on it to run it. You'll see a window like the one below. Click on the Start button in the smitRem window.

The program will create a folder on your desktop called "SmitRem"

Now, you should reboot your computer into Safe Mode. If you need help on getting into Safe Mode, see this tutorial.

Once your PC is in Safe Mode, open the SmitRem folder on your desktop. You will see a file within called RunThis.bat (or just RunThis). Double-click on that file, and Safety Defender will be removed from your PC.

When it is complete, reboot your computer again.

Now run the Panda ActiveScan virus scanner as detailed in Step 1 of our guide to Get Rid of Spyware, Adware, and Web Browser Hijackers. Only then can you be completely sure than your computer is clean from infection.

You should now be free of Safety Defender - however, you may have additional spyware on your PC. These things tend to travel in packs ;) Go through the rest of the instructions in the Get Rid of Spyware guide to remove any other infections, and to protect your PC from future spyware.

If you have been referred to this Tutorial from the help forums:  please find the C:\smitfiles.txt file. Open it in notepad and copy & paste the contents in your next post in the forum.

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