Question Equalizer apo ... virus or bug? or tracking app?

[Sorrowknight]

So my problem is... Equalizer Apo have too many gb.. is this a virus? is someone using this to gather info from pc? i dunno but as u can see in the image it has 8 gb and its not normal, im tired of deleting it every time a few months and i want to get rid of this forever. it occupies all the space on disk C if it cans, last time it had 20 or 30 gb.. as i cannot find a solution online i have to ask here.. what do u guys think? how do i get rid of it for all?

https://ibb.co/CtXLYJQ

 

[COLGeek]

What app(s) are you using to scan for malware?

Do you actually have this installed?

Equalizer APO

Download Equalizer APO for free. A system-wide equalizer for Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11. Equalizer APO is a parametric / graphic equalizer for Windows. It is implemented as an Audio Processing Object (APO) for the system effect infrastructure introduced with Windows Vista.

sourceforge.net

 

[Sorrowknight]

What app(s) are you using to scan for malware?

Do you actually have this installed?

Equalizer APO

Download Equalizer APO for free. A system-wide equalizer for Windows 7 / 8 / 8.1 / 10 / 11. Equalizer APO is a parametric / graphic equalizer for Windows. It is implemented as an Audio Processing Object (APO) for the system effect infrastructure introduced with Windows Vista.

sourceforge.net

i do not believe in antivirus apps anymore man.. they all lie. it seems i have found a kit/installer of the program but i mustve deleted or uninstalled it long time ago coz i dont find it installed anymore.

 

[Sorrowknight]

what should i try to delete it so it never came back? everytime i delete it restores itself and gains GB after GB again and again.. i dont want to reinstall windows for such a trivial issue

 

[COLGeek]

i do not believe in antivirus apps anymore man.. they all lie. it seems i have found a kit/installer of the program but i mustve deleted or uninstalled it long time ago coz i dont find it installed anymore.

Good luck then.

Deleting the file isn't enough. You need to delete what is generating the file. If not the app, then some other malware.

 

[RedBlueGreene]

i do not believe in antivirus apps anymore man.. they all lie. it seems i have found a kit/installer of the program but i mustve deleted or uninstalled it long time ago coz i dont find it installed anymore.

I mean, if you're concerned that you may have malware, that should take precedence over your distaste of antivirus software. If you can't find an antivirus program that you like, you can always install it for a scan and then uninstall it when you're done.

I think it very well could be indicative of a virus. I use Equalizer APO on my own computer and haven't seen anything like this. If you installed Equalizer APO at some point in the past, but don't remember ever using it, the reason could very well be that you thought you were installing Equalizer APO, but got it from the wrong source, and when the program failed to work as expected, you simply forgot about it. In my opinion, it's unlikely that a piece of malware would generate anything disguised as a file for Equalizer APO unless it detects that you have Equalizer APO installed already, or if the malware came to you packaged as "Equalizer APO", because it's probably a fairly small percentage of people that actually already have Equalizer APO on their computers. Sure, some bug could potentially cause Equalizer APO to create a massive file like that, but you said that the program doesn't appear to be installed, so I see that as a less likely explanation.

I'm curious to see what comes of this. Best thing I could recommend is running an antivirus scan. These tools were made for a reason.

 

[COLGeek]

As stated earlier, you need to find what is creating the file. Scanning with an app like Malwarebytes may help with this.

Official Site | Malwarebytes: Antivirus, Anti-Malware & Privacy

Malwarebytes offers advanced antivirus, anti-malware, privacy and scam protection for all your devices. Protect your digital life today.

www.malwarebytes.com

 

[Sorrowknight]

As stated earlier, you need to find what is creating the file. Scanning with an app like Malwarebytes may help with this.

Official Site | Malwarebytes: Antivirus, Anti-Malware & Privacy

Malwarebytes offers advanced antivirus, anti-malware, privacy and scam protection for all your devices. Protect your digital life today.

www.malwarebytes.com

i scanned it back then with malware bytes and other antivirus crap apps and they detected nothing, so... sorry for not using them, yes i got viruses by my own stupidity when i downloaded from shady sites but most antiviruses failed to fix the problems, most of the time i had to google for hours and try to find the responsible file/virus in the pc by myself.

 

[COLGeek]

i scanned it back then with malware bytes and other antivirus crap apps and they detected nothing, so... sorry for not using them, yes i got viruses by my own stupidity when i downloaded from shady sites but most antiviruses failed to fix the problems, most of the time i had to google for hours and try to find the responsible file/virus in the pc by myself.

Then look at Task Manager and see what is running that looks odd/out of place/using too much memory/etc.

Doing something "back then" doesn't apply to now. Just something to think about.

It seems you need to fully wipe your system, perform a clean install of Windows and re-install your apps from legitimate sources.

 

[RedBlueGreene]

Just thought of something else. There's a GUI program made for Equalizer APO that I, and just about everybody else uses called Peace. Check to see if you have it installed. If it is, then maybe it's trying to operate without Equalizer APO and that is causing issues. There would be no reason to have Peace installed without Equalizer APO, so if you do find Peace, I would uninstall it. That's about all I've got.

 

[Sorrowknight]

Just thought of something else. There's a GUI program made for Equalizer APO that I, and just about everybody else uses called Peace. Check to see if you have it installed. If it is, then maybe it's trying to operate without Equalizer APO and that is causing issues. There would be no reason to have Peace installed without Equalizer APO, so if you do find Peace, I would uninstall it. That's about all I've got.

it seems i dont have any Peace installed... i tried to scan it with malwarebytes and it found nothing.. i scanned it with microsoft defender and it found something called PUA:Win32/SBYinYing. im trying to google and find out much about it but doesnt seem ti find how to get rid of it.. and curious enough most of the online virus file scanners cant process the equalizer.apo when i upload it. lol :/

 

[RedBlueGreene]

it seems i dont have any Peace installed... i tried to scan it with malwarebytes and it found nothing.. i scanned it with microsoft defender and it found something called PUA:Win32/SBYinYing. im trying to google and find out much about it but doesnt seem ti find how to get rid of it.. and curious enough most of the online virus file scanners cant process the equalizer.apo when i upload it. lol :/

Keep in mind that searching on Google for help with something like this can easily lead you to auto-generated articles that try to scare you into downloading/buying their crap software.

I found some people on Reddit discussing SBYinYing. Looks like it's used to fool DRM in some games. (Making the game believe you have a legitimate copy, and not a pirated version). These sorts of things are often detected as potentially unwanted programs or viruses, but may be completely harmless. It's probably unrelated to your issue with the Equalizer APO file in Temp, but whether you trust SBYinYing is another important question of its own. For example, if you find that it is using some of your memory when there's no reason it should even be running, that's a good indicator that it could be doing something nefarious.

 

[Darkbreeze]

i do not believe in antivirus apps anymore man.. they all lie.

The question isn't whether people lie or not. Of course, ALL big companies LIE. That's never in question.

What IS in question, is why you think this is somehow directly related to you, specifically, and what it is you believe makes you more important than anybody else, in this regard? Because, I assure you, there are plenty of watchdog organizations out there keeping tabs on the most common applications JUST to make sure that your sort of belief will most probably always lack merit. Not to say there are no outliers, but mostly, it's an area that's too highly visible for it to be a good backdoor for anybody.

Plus, this (Which maybe always needs to be a consideration, even when we don't think it's applicable (LOL):

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