unable to manually remove OSX/VSearch-A

That's adware.

http://www.thesafemac.com/art/

Were people able to remove this adware with AdMedic?

My efforts to date have failed. It didn't pick up the adware/threat that my computer as well as jagfnz identified above through Sophos.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what could be tried next?

Thanks 

Besides runnng AdMedic, what else have you tried?

What is the path Sophos is showing for this? Can you navigate to this location and trash it? You might also contact Thomas Reed, the author of AdMedic, to see what he knows about this and suggests. If you want to do that, whatever it is don't trash it until you can perhaps upload it to him so he can analyze it.

thomas@thesafemac.com

See if manually removing these files does the job. May be for an older variant of this, and if so, there may be other files involved. But worth a try.

http://www.thesafemac.com/arg-downlite/

Thanks brvx,

I did try manually trashing the files but the macbook would not allow it.  

Instead I found through Finder that the files were attached to a setup file.

To get rid of the threat, this setup file has to be trashed and the setup exe file, dragged from the desktop and ejected through the trash.

A follow up scan of the computer showed that the threats (adware) had been removed after doing this.

Cheers!  

I'm having a similar issue with both OSX/VSearch-A and OSX/VSearch-D. I end up with the message "The operation can't be completed because backup items can't be modified". They appear to be stuck in Time Machine Backups. I have tried ADMedic and visiting the Time Machine site listed in this thread. I appreciate any suggestions to remove them.

Try using this freeware....works for me

http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/8214/trash-it!

Remove them thusly

write down the location

Open time machine

Browse to the date of the location

find the file (for me it was Vsearch, located in the Mac hard drive folder/ library/ application support/ vsearch )
Right click the file and select Remove back up. 

Oingo boingo off it went

And that was that.

To repeat

FILES THAT SAY BACKUPS CAN'T BE DELETED CAN BE DELETED BY BROWSING TO THEM IN TIME MACHINE. 

Whew.that was a tough one !

Cheers, 

Night Falcon 

NightFalcon,

The file path you gave was very helpful in that it led me to the same point at which you deleted your files. However, when I right click on the file I am not offered the option to delete backup files. I read somewhere else that revealing hidden files can help somehow. I remember doing that on an old windows computer, but I can't find it on my imac, plus I am not sure that is applicable since I can find the file. I also read that these shouldn't hurt the computer since they are in backup, I am not sure if I am confident in that, I would rather get rid of them.

Any suggestions on how I can obtain the option to manualy delete this file?

Thanks :)

DW,

I think this info will be useful for me. I do see that an .exe file is listed after the VSearch file. I just cannot seem to find the .exe file to delete. Can you give a little more detail about how to get to that and delet it?

Thanks!