I found a desktop icon for something called PC TuneUp Maestro on my parents' laptop. Googling it yields pages upon pages of freeware download sites, but I couldn't find anything legitimately confirming or clearing it of malware status. I distrust these programs by default, but Microsoft Security Essentials seems to think it's legit. Does anyone know what this program is and if it's up to anything surreptious? Can I uninstall it or do I write off the entire OS install as tainted?
The system hosts file is intact (no funny unicode lookalikes either), so that red flag, at least, hasn't been raised.
Best Answer
Yes, it appears to me that this software is malware. Probably fraudware, trying to get you to pay for the "full version" in order to do anything meaningful.
tombull89's opinion is generally a good idea. There aren't many truly legitimate pc tuners. It's incredibly difficult to automatically tune computers. However, it's not completely accurate either. For it's difficulty it is not impossible and there are several tools that are legitimate and valuable.
Possibly the easiest such tool is Soluto which advertises on this site. It may not be the most powerful, but if you need something for a parental unit's pc, it can be very good. CCleaner is also very good and currently is the only registry cleaner I use. There is legitimate garbage that accumulates in the registry, mostly from poor software uninstall processes, and CCleaner can be helpful. However, you need to know what you're doing to run it. Reg cleaning should never be done blindly.