Winfixer: Where did this thing come from?

Answers on a postcard, please. I just had a fresh test box running, cleaned of all previous infections when what should appear but the following:

Puzzled? Very much so. The IE Window just slammed onto the desktop out of nowhere. Not that I'm complaining - check out the nifty features of this package. First off, the incredibly dubious rundll32.exe buffer overrun message. How any company can expect to pop something like that up nowadays and not take a severe roasting for it is beyond me. So here goes - congratulations, that is without a doubt the most stinkingly awful ploy I have seen this week to get someone to run something they don't need. Well done on trying something so utterly turgid that it was bound to attract attention from the wrong places (like, me for example).

If you click into the image, you will notice that they want you to check out the Licence Agreement. Great, except you can't actually get to it without clicking all the other garbage first. After you get rid of the fake error message, you then need to decide whether or not to agree to the .Cab file in the popup box. As you might have guessed, you still can't check out the licence.

At this point, Mr Winfix man will start crying and complain that the end-user doesn't have to click yes to the installer popup. They could click no, and read the licence. Brilliant logic, except if that's the case (and unless you got a monkey to code the page, you must be aware that you can't read the licence without clicking things), why bother with the installer popup when there's two other places on that page you can initiate the download yourself from?

You know, the big red "CLICK HERE!!!" button and the fake "scanning now" image that attempts to install something out of the blue if you click it? Why make it look like you've done a scan and want to present me with the results?

Oh yeah, it's a crock, that's why.

Needless to say, if you install the thing, you get something like this:

Aaaa! 389 severe system threats!! Quick, pay them whatever they want right now!...because (you guessed it), clicking the "Fix" button will take you to the old faithful payment screen. Oh man, and I wanted all those evil URL entries and cookies killing off for free!

Well, I got something for you, it's called the Internet Explorer options panel and it does much of what Winfixer claims and for a lot less money (like, nothing).

Panicking that my poor testbox was at death's door, I gave it a swift reboot and ran the scan again. Well actually, it just kind of ran itself and told me I had 389 system threats. Curious, I ran the scan again and this time was told I had...382? What happened to the others? Clicking the buy button took me to this:

So, 332 critical errors but only 279 system threats found?Where are the other 53? And why have I just been told I now have 334 critical errors? Does this thing actually know what it is doing? Doesn't seem the most reliable tool out there, does it? Ah well, it's only $39.95 - buy it you fool! Buy it! Don't let logic and / or common sense get in the way! These people deserve to be rich!

As you can tell, this isn't my most favourite application. And I still don't know where the Hell the popup came from!