Even with up to date anti-virus software, a virus or malware may slip through occasionally and cause havoc with your PC. When this happens, taking your computer to a computer store can sometimes be expensive and may require you to be without it for several days. While every type of computer malware infection is different, following these simple steps will often get your PC running again and help avoid the expense and downtime of offsite computer repairs.
First, you will want to reboot your computer to clear memory of anything that may be currently running. Most likely, malware will begin to run as soon as it reboots, but we want to start with as clean of an environment as possible. As soon as the reboot is complete, you will want to start a full scan with your existing anti-virus program. In an ideal situation, your anti-virus software will locate and eliminate any infection, and your PC will once again be operational. Many times, various malware or virus applications can slip through real time protection, but will then be picked up and eliminated by a complete file level scan. This often happens because anti-virus manufacturers are always playing catch up as a virus must be released in the wild and infect PCs before they become aware of it and update their anti-virus definitions to enable them to locate and eliminate it. Because of this scenario, often times an PC will become infected, but by the time the user identifies an issue, and runs a complete scan, their anti-virus software has been updated and can now locate and eliminate the virus.
If your existing anti-virus software cannot eliminate the issues you are experiencing, you should then attempt to download and install Spybot Search and Destroy and Malwarebytes. Both of these programs are available from download.com as free downloads. While neither of these applications provide real time protection like an anti-virus program does, they are effective scanning utilities that work well to cleanup an existing infection. Make sure to update these programs after installation and run a full scan and then eliminate anything that they find. Sometimes, they will not be able to remove everything during the initial scan and may need to configure themselves to run automatically on startup so that they can remove infections before they load themselves into the computers memory. If this is the case be sure to allow them to do this as even a single piece of malware left on your computer can cause a complete reinfection.
If you continue to have issues, you can download combofix from http://www.bleepingcomputer.com. This is a very powerful utility, and should only be run as a last resort. While it is very effective in removing malware and associated programs, it can also inject additional issues with your computer as a result of the removal process. This would then lead to additional cleanup being required. Because of this, it is generally not a good idea to run combofix unless it is absolutely necessary.
Hopefully, these programs will clean your computer of malware and virus programs, and return it to a functioning condition. If this is the case, it is a good idea to turn system restore off and back on to clean all of the existing system restore points. If Windows created a restore point between the time the infection occurred and when it was eliminated, the infection is often times included as part of the restore, and if you then restore in the future, you could be reinstalling the malware or virus that you just took all the time to remove.
If after running the above mentioned programs, your PC is still infected, I would recommend contacting a computer professional and seeking their assistance. More advanced removal techniques often require manually making changes to the inter workings of your computer such as manual registry edits, or replacing individual system files. If any of these types of steps are done incorrectly, your computer may loose it’s ability to boot successfully. Hopefully however it will not come to this and you will be able to disinfect and clean your computer on your own.
