Scan for Spyware and Virus Infections
If you have never had your computer compromised by spyware you either have not been using computers for very long or you a living uniquely blessed life. The rest of us know all too well the frustrations of Pop-ups, Misdirected internet searches, weird error messages, slow responding computers, and computers that are flat out broken due to malware. These infections are truly a cause of stress for many people. The topic of Malware encompasses all types of unwelcome software and is a vast, varied topic indeed. The one question that I do not think I will ever have an acceptable answer for is why do the hackers do it? I have heard all the usual answers; I just don’t know how some people can have such disregard for others. Anyway, that is a deep, dark subject that I am going to stay away from for now. Today I am going to discuss options removing the malware once your system is infected.
The first question I am often asked is “How do I know if it is a Virus or just Spyware?” The question used to make me chuckle but now I just smile and answer the question. The difference between a Virus and “just” Spyware is that a Virus can reproduce. That’s it. I realize that is a big difference but my point is that having either one on your system is a serious threat. It’s a bit like asking if I would rather die from a gunshot or a knife wound. I would rather not die from either. You don’t want either on your system. So assuming you are going to try and tackle the infection on your own, I am going to offer some tips
I would like to mention that if you are a high risk user, you should be backing up your system on a regular basis and be prepared to have an infection cripple your system in spite of your protection efforts. By high risk user I mean someone surfing adult sites or using file sharing programs. For the rest of us the products I am going to mention today, used and updated regularly will keep you system in good shape for a long time. Most of them are free and all of them have been used extensively by me. I have a computer repair business and I do install these programs onto customer computers so that the customers can keep themselves free of infections after they are clean. I have a pretty good repeat customer ratio but most of them are asking me to work on a completely different computer or at least a different problem when they call me the second and subsequent times because the anti-virus and anti-spyware programs are doing their thing.
First I will talk about Anti-Virus. Many vendors will claim that their software is the best anti virus software that money can buy. If so many are claiming to be the best, someone is obviously wrong. There are just a few things to know and try. Do not have two anti-virus programs installed on your computer at the same time. Bad Idea, they are powerful programs and will cause conflicts between each other. I strongly recommend AVG free antivirus. Even if you have an infection today, download it and let it clean up your system and keep it that way. Most of the time this program can clean an already infected computer, if it cannot clean up your infected computer try ESET Nod32. Eset Nod32 is not free but you can get a thirty day free trial.
Now on to AntiSpyware. I am going to mention quite a few programs. The reason for that is OFTEN it is necessary to run two, three, even four different antispyware programs to get all of the junk out. I can already hear the arguments that say If you would buy one of the “superior” commercial products you would not have to do that. I can tell you from over 15 years experience saving dead computers that Yes, occasionally, there is a really superior commercial offering, but often even the big boys don’t catch everything. So go with my suggestions, they are all free and you can have them all installed, there are no conflicts. I am not going to go into how to install or use any of these as that would take quite some time. I may add that information to the website later. But for now here are the recommended programs.
Spybot search and destroy. Make sure you download this from a trusted source because there have been cases of hackers putting out software that has a similar Name in hopes you will download the wrong thing. The reason they do that is because Spybot is that good. safer-networking.org is the author’s website try to get it there.
MalwareBytes – This is a very powerful anti-spyware program. So powerful in fact that hackers have targeted it directly. Sometimes after installing the program it won’t run because the hackers have blocked your system from running that particular filename. The solution is to go to the installation folder, rename the exe and then running it directly from that folder by double clicking it.
Combofix – Verbatim what I just wrote about MalwareBytes, even the part about sometimes having to rename the exe.
Superantispyware. Same story as MalwareBytes and Combofix.
I highly recommend downloading, installing and running CCleaner before you do any of these other things though because CCleaner will delete tons of garbage files from you system thereby reducing the time it takes to scan the computer with these other tools.