There were some questionable files on my computer and I installed Stopzilla to remove these files. However, Stopzilla has now become the pest. How can I remove Stopzilla from my computer? The computer is running Windows XP.

After reading other user reviews of Stopzilla, it seems the general consensus is that the program is very difficult to cleanly uninstall and remove from the computer. Users have often reported that the uninstall program will throw errors, halting the removal process, or may also generate serious Windows errors once completed and the computer restarts. Since you have mentioned that Stopzilla is now the pest I assume that you have been unable to completely run the uninstaller and remove the program from the computer. Since the inbuilt uninstaller is proving troublesome, we will need to attempt some alternative methods to remove the software.

Before commencing this procedure, I strongly suggest that you backup any important data you wish to keep on the computer. Forcefully uninstalling a program could have adverse consequences on the computer, such as problems when attempting to startup the computer or run other applications, which may necessitate a reinstall of Windows. While this is unlikely, it has been known to happen so it is better to be safe than sorry! Once you have a full backup of all your data, restart Windows so that all background processes start. After Windows has started, we need to disable the Stopzilla process(es) from loading on future start-ups. Go to the “Start” menu > “Run” and type “msconfig” (without the quotes) and click OK. In the System Configuration Utility window, click the “Startup” tab which will list all the processes that load on Windows startup. Look through the list for any processes associated with Stopzilla and untick their entries to disable that particular process from loading on startup. If you are unsure as to the purpose of a particular process, try searching Google or ProcessLibrary.com for the process name, which should provide information on the nature of the process (and whether it is related to Stopzilla).

After any Stopzilla related processes have been disabled from loading on startup, you will need to close any Stopzilla processes which are currently running in the background. This is necessary because we will next want to delete the Stopzilla program files, and can only do this once any running Stopzilla processes have been closed (as we cannot delete running programs or processes). Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to open the Windows Task Manager. Click the “Processes” tab and a list of all running processes on the computer will be displayed. Click the “User Name” column to sort the processes by user name (if the user name column is not visible, go to the “View” menu > “Select Columns” then tick “User Name” and click OK). Close any non-essential processes which are running under your user name. It will be easier to simply close all background processes running under your user name than attempt to discern the Stopzilla processes from all the processes. Don’t be alarmed though ? any non-Stopzilla processes should start again once Windows is restarted (as we only disabled Stopzilla processes from loading on startup, using the System Configuration Utility in a previous step).

After all the background processes running under your user name have been closed, the final step in the forced uninstallation of Stopzilla is to delete the Stopzilla program files. Open My Computer or Windows Explorer and navigate to the Stopzilla installation directory. This is most likely “C:Program FilesSTOPZilla!”. Once you have found this directory, rename the directory to something else (such as STOPZilla_OLD). Renaming will break any links between the program files and items which may load within Windows, but will keep the program files in case something goes horribly wrong and we need to reverse our changes.

At this stage, Stopzilla should be disabled on the computer. To test, restart the computer and check whether Stopzilla loads. If you receive any messages on Windows startup about particular programs or processes being unable to load, this indicates that Windows is still trying to load a program or process located in the former STOPzilla directory. Obviously, it cannot load the process as you have renamed the directory to STOPzilla_OLD. This is nothing to worry about, as such messages provide useful information on other Stopzilla-related processes which you may not have disabled previously. So, should any such messages appear, write down the details about the program or process that is attempting to load. Then, go back into the System Configuration Utility (msconfig) and disable that program or process from loading on startup. This should resolve any such messages on startup.

If there are significant adverse consequences of the above procedure, or this procedure was unable to fully and cleanly remove Stopzilla from the computer, there are very few other alternatives available. Should this cause extreme problems, then the only other suitable suggestion is to complete a clean reinstallation of Windows. While this isn’t a particularly neat solution, it will resolve the problem. Should you decide to proceed with this option, then make sure you have a full backup of all data you wish to keep (in fact, I would recommend multiple backups) since you will lose all your data during a clean reinstallation of Windows.