BleepingComputer.com: How To Get Rid Of Pc Angel?

I'm running Windows XP Media Center edition which came with my computer (eMachine) when I bought it 3 years ago. I've never had any trouble accessing my D drive before tonight when I was trying to save a file to it and it said I didn't have enough space on that drive. When I tried to open the D drive from My Computer to see what I could delete to make more space, I get the following message:

Protected by PC Angel

Recovery Partition
Warning!

This area of your hard disk
(or partition) contains files used
for your system recovery.

Do not delete or alter these files.

Any change to this partition could
prevent any recovery later.

I've never seen this message before and I've never even heard of PC Angel before today. I did not install this software and I've never seen it before today. I checked under Add/Remove programs and this software isn't listed so I can't uninstall it that way. I checked under C:\Program Files and there's nothing related to PC Angel there. I ran a search on both my C and D drives for any files with PC Angel in their titles and nothing came up. I went to start > run > MSCONFIG > startup and nothing related to PC Angel is there either. How can I get rid of this software so I can access my files on the D drive?? And where the heck did this software come from if I didn't install it and I've never even seen it on my computer before today after 3 years of use??

Thanks in advance.

What PC Angel is:

http://www.softthinks.com/US/pc_angel.html

http://www.pcangelsolutions.com/why.htm

PC Angel is a recovery system that eMachines has used to enable system recovery in the event of an unrecoverable crash.
In my experience it's usually transparent to the user until something goes wrong - then it's a huge pain to remove/get around.

The first step here would be to back up all of your data - because messing with this utility could cause issues with your system.
Then, start reading through the links from this Google search for more info on getting rid of it: http://www.google.com/search?q=emachines+p...lient=firefox-a

FWIW - at work when we encounter this problem, we usually end up reformatting the computer with a generic XP disk (to get rid of PC Angel) - although we have had success with the built in restore utility on a couple of occasions.

PC "angel". Let's send it to back to heaven

Method 1:

1. Open a command prompt.
2. Type: sc config pca start= disabled

(There is a space between "start=" and "disabled"- this is important!)


Method 2:
1. Open RegEdit
2. Navigate to HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PCA
3. Change the DWORD "Start" from 2 (automatic) to 4 (disabled)


Either of these should stop the service more or less immediately- this isn't normal behavior for a service, and I have to wonder if they're actually watching that part of the registry to see when someone disables it.

After this, you should be able to access files on your recovery partition. They most likely are marked with system and hidden attributes, which you can remove or just set Explorer to display.

For some extra fun, run "wordpad d:\protect.ed" and edit the warning message (it's in RTF), or open d:\desktop.ini and d:\folder.htt and have other fun.

Remember, this is your recovery software and partition- usual warnings apply. I'm not responsible for these instructions deleting your data, mangling your dog, eating the last slice of pizza, or any other heinous thing. ;)