Guide to Detection and Removal Of Malware

Guide to Detection and Removal Of Malware

Dan Sippy, Apr 29, 2007 1800 hrs IST

Is your PC acting strange? Maybe it's sick. Here's a prescription that should make it feel better!

The first thing that you need to do is check if any unwanted software is installed on your system. This can be done at the Add/Remove Programs option in the Control Panel.

Once you have checked all of the entries there and find nothing out of the ordinary, go to the Run option in the Start Menu and type in "msconfig" and click on Ok. Once that is done, the System Configuration Utility Window will open up. There are several tabs in this window, but we're interested in only two - Services and Startup. First click on the Startup tab. Here you can either disable all (none of them are required for your system to boot), but that will cause nothing to load when your system boots up; or you can go through each one of them and disable the ones that are either blank or are not related to any of the programs you have requested to be at startup.

Then comes the cleanup of your system. Now cleanup doesn't mean deleting your personal data, it means deleting unwanted data that has occupied space in your system over a period of time. They are mostly temp files or prefetch files. Cleanup 4.52 helps you to wipe them out. Before you run cleanup, make sure that no program is running on your system, even minimized ones. It is also recommended to try these steps in Safe Mode and not in the normal mode or at the most you can try the Safe Mode with Networking option. Before you run cleanup, make sure you have selected the appropriate settings in the options section (I suggest you select Full Erase (Wipe Clean), but if you have important bookmarks, it's your call).

Once cleanup is complete, do not log off or do anything else; just run CCleaner. First, select the Analyse button and once that is completed, hit the Run Cleaner button. This erases any temp file that has been missed out by Cleanup 4.52. Second, Go to the Issues Bar on the left side and Scan for Issues (issues are unwanted registry entries).Once that has completed, select Fix All Selected Issues. You don't need to backup the registry files but you have the option.

After this we get down to detecting the threats using HijackThis. This brilliant software of almost negligible file size detects threats by checking registry entries on your system and then compares it with their database. It will then show you which entries need to be deleted and which do not. Follow the instructions and delete the necessary entries. After this there will still be some traces of the spyware, but HijackThis helps weaken the spyware by wiping off its registry entries.