Viruses, Malware, Spyware and Adware...OH MY !!!!!

Hiren's

  Some of the virus cleaning sources have updated their software. Malwarebytes has come out with a new 2.0 version. The look is a little different, but it does look very good. You can select what to scan for and what drives you want to scan. Their first version of Malwarebytes 2.0 did take a long time to scan if you set it to scan for rootkits as well. The only other part I did not like was that you can not always get information to show in the log file. You also can not select all items quarantined. They just have no choice to select all items found. This means that if you are looking for a total of items found  you will have to select each one at a time and keep count. For the causal user at home this number may not be important, but for the computer technician who has to keep track of the amount of found items it becomes a tedious and time consuming job. All in all Free Malwarebytes does a good job of removing viruses, spyware, adware and malware.
 MAKE SURE YOU HAVE GOOD Virus Protection Software AND KEEP IT UP TO DATE.


The next virus cleaning software that has a new version is the Spybot program. They had a new 2.1, 2.2 and now a 2.3 version. It has a portable version that works very well and is free. It does have a newer look than the older versions, but is easy to work with. You do have a choice to save the log file. You can save the log file before you clean what was found or after you have chosen to fix or delete the items found. You can also uncheck anything if you feel it is not an infection.
  I still like the Combofix virus cleaning program. The best place to get it from is bleeping computer. Just remember to reboot the computer after it has finished and shown you the log file of what was found. The log file is automatically saved to the root drive. If there are a lot of items found and deleted it may be too long if you need to have the total number. A trick that I found is to use the excel program in windows. First select the group of deletions found by highlighting the group. The easy way is to place the curser on the first item, then go to the last item in the deletion list, hold the shift key down click your left mouse button. This will select the group you want. Next click the right mouse button and you will get a drop down window. At this point you can click the copy choice. Now open the excel program and choose to paste your copied items in it. The nice this is that excel has all the lines numbered, so you can scroll to the end and get the total number. Just remember Combofix does not run in windows 8 or 8.1 yet. Hopefully they will get it working for it, because it is such a good cleaning tool.
   There are other tools that the technician can use in their cleaning arsenal. Some of my favorites are Eset Online Scanner, TDSS Killer, Super AntiSpyware Portable, A-Squared and Clamwin Portable. I am looking into a portable virus cleaner by Comodo, but have done nothing with it yet. Another item I strongly advise getting are Hirens 15.1 and 15.2, which are bootable ISO files that can be burned to a cd or to a usb flash drive. The nice capability is that you can copy your virus cleaning tools to the root drive in a folder and run them from with in Hirens. The newer version of Malwarebytes does not run unless you can get it to update. Just remember to click on the internet explorer icon to connect to the internet. Make sure you have a good Ethernet connection. Also superanti spyware must be started first in Hirens before you try to run your portable version. It also will not run on the Hirens 15.2 and will cause a bluescreen error. This tool is awesome if your computer keeps looping or can not be run in the normal or safe mode due to the infection. One other piece of software I would recommend is the Revo Uninstaller program. It does come in a free portable version giving you the capability of removing those pesky junk programs that get on your computer.
  There are other bootable repair disks that can be very helpful to the repair technician or the home user that knows what they are doing. Some of these are the Falcon Repair disk, which is a variation of the Hirens CD. There are also the Ultimate Boot Disks, Win7 PE and Win8 PE disks that have plenty of tools. All of these have various plugins and your plugins can be adapted if you are capable of doing so. There are also other paid versions and tools available on the internet. Just be careful of where you get them from.
  Finally if you are not comfortable with cleaning up your computer, then seek out the professional computer repair shop in your local area.
  Thank You for reading and stay safe.