What is Solid Peer?

Firstly, you might like to know what this is and how you got infected, the chances are you probably installed it without realising as it's bundled with adware supported software like Morpheus.

Essentially solid peer is software that displays targetted pop up adverts, it therefore 'knows' which websites are visited by your computer and works out how to target adverts based on that information. Not something you'd generally install by choice it has to be said!

As a side note, it appears that at least some anti-virus and anti-advert software identifies this software as 'xirc.darkwarez' so if you think you are infected with xirc.darkwarez see if you actually have sold peer installed.

Removing Solid Peer

OK, so how do we remove solid peer and uninstall it from the system so you won't get another popup? Luckily it seems that the software is quite well behaved, it should generally have created an entry in your 'Add/Remove Programs'. Simply select 'remove' and follow the prompts.

If you can't find solid peer in your 'Add/Remove Programs' or have other problems then read on.

Solid Peer Removal - Step by Step

Of course it's not always quite so simple to remove as I found out when I tried to uninstall it! For reasons best known to the makers of solid peer they require you have a working Internet connection and further that Internet Explorer has it's cookie permissions / privacy settings set to default.

Follow the pics below to see the hassle just to perform what should be a simple removal process!

Bring up 'Add/Remove Programs' and select Solid Peer from the list:

OK, a normal-looking uninstall window:

Now the fun begins (btw that link points to EULA - uninstall section):

Dam and I always thought it was a good idea to disable cookies:

OK, I can take a hint I'll put Cookies on just for you:

YaY!

Problems?

One thing which I have heard is it may not be listed under 'Add/Remove Programs'. If this is the case then you could try installing it again, installing Morpheus should do the trick!

I can't work out what relationship "My PC Tuneup" has with various advert serving software companies but they look to be quite entwined so try their uninstaller which is available at My PC Tuneup Evaluate.

Other Details

I actually installed this nasty on purpose because a friend had installed it by accident on his PC, I downloaded Morpheus to see if I would get the same problems.

My PC has Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware (beta) installed and I got the following prompts while installing Morpheus.

So if I wasn't trying to get infected I'd have clicked 'Block' to stop speerox.dll and nszboagv.exe from completely installing and that would have prevented most of the issues!

The interesting information given on the popups told me the names of at least two of the files which were installed. I was then able to check they really were removed after the uninstall routine was finally completed

As a final note, Spybot S&D did not identify or even notice solid peer and Ad-Aware SE Personal spotted something amiss but showed the following report:

Note that spybot's inability to identify solid peer and ad-aware's xirc.darkwarez behaviour is likely to change as both products update and refine their search and identification methods (hopefully soon!)