Finding a Registry Key In Order to Delete It

Question

A couple of months ago, I acquired some lovely malware. After removing this (lovely) malware I received a pop message, further improving my day. The message indicates that there was a problem starting (bogus) file tosendto.dll, because the file could not be found.

Searching the registry with the phrase "tosendto.dll" does not yield any results. This error seems to be significantly impacting my computer's performance, and I'm out of ideas to find the key invoking the file. Any and all help would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I would have to guess that the file's name is probably encoded in a way that might be challenging to find, possibly using a binary value instead of a string value. I would personally recommend CCleaner's registry cleaner feature, which finds invalid registry entries, and cleans them up for you. There are other tools out there that do this as well, but since I usually look for the least expensive solution, which in this case, is free, CCleaner is usually the first tool I turn to when I need to fix registry errors involving missing DLL files, etc.

(Disclaimer: I am not, nor have ever, been employed or affiliated with piriform, I just like their software.)

(Note: This assumes you have successfully removed the malware. Make sure you've used a malware scanner first, because CCleaner doesn't do that.)

Answer 2

Instead of trying to explain how malware works, please have a look at the very well written answers in this article: How can I remove malicious spyware, malware, adware, viruses, trojans or rootkits from my PC?