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Remove CommonName Spyware
About CommonName
CommonName is an IE toolbar allowing you to enter keywords or a company name to go to CommonName customers' web sites. Newer versions have added search and Gator-like form-filling functions. After its original release, the software has become a complicated (and sometimes buggy) search-hijacker and adware, aggressively bundled with many third-party apps.
Remove this spyware using Spyware Doctor
CommonName has the following variants:
CommonName/Toolbar : installs an IE toolbar with a keyword lookup box.
CommonName/Agent : takes over searches entered into the standard IE address bar (by means of an IE Browser Helper Object), and pops up ads occasionally.
CommonName/Mib : version 3.6.0.0 onwards also includes a WinSock2 Layered Service Provider, CNMib.dll.
CommonName/Zenet : version 3.6.2.0 onwards also has its BHO re-register itself periodically, to make it hard to remove manually.
CommonName/Winnet : version 4.0.0.0 onwards also has a separate updating process, which re-registers itself constantly, to make it even harder to remove manually.
CommonName/Comwiz : later 4.x versions use two restarting processes instead of one. In a trick learned from virus authors, if one process is killed the other one starts it back up again. However the LSP seems no longer to be in use.
How to Remove CommonName Spyware?
For Agent, Toolbar and Mib variants, you can open Control Panel, clickAdd/Remove Programs, find the CommonName entry, and select Remove, it should work fine.
With the later variants (Zenet onwards), unfortunately, this just sends you to a page on CommonName's web site with a form to submit leading to an uninstaller download. This requires a working Internet Explorer with ActiveX downloads enabled to function.
Each successive variant of CommonName gets harder to remove manually. Variants (Mib, Zenet, Winnet) with an LSP(Winsock2 Layered Service Provider module) are particularly tricky: do not try to delete them by just deleting the files.It includes a (LSP). If you delete this, you will lose network connectivity. Since it is a hard task to remove them by hand, we recommed you remove this spyware using PestPatrol
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