Virus Cleaning

[retired_member16]

My sister-in-law has dumped her PC on my doorstep with instructions to
"clean all the crap" off it.

I dont have the time for a rebuild, so can anyone recommend some funky virus/adware/crap cleaning links that I can run through it tonight?

TIA

 

[Jeewhizz]

adaware from lavasoft
you could try the windows build of clamav, or avast!

 

[AdminAdmin is verified member.]

Go into IE, delete all offline files & cookies
Run Disk Clean up in Windows Explorer
(this will save you ages when running the SpyBot scanners)

Get AVG Free Anti Virus if you dont have one:
AVG Free Advisor: Installation files & documentation

Install and run Search & Destroy (safer-networking.org)
Install and run Adaware from Lavasoft (see majorgeeks.com)
Download and run Crap Cleaner (see filehippo.com) - this does load of clean up including missing short cuts, registry etc and its free

Reboot
Defrag the hard disk

you are good to go!

 

[retired_member16]

Thanks v much for the links, that will save me a lot of hassle.

 

[denchomsky]

i use crap cleaner CCleaner for short, it does cookies, registry e.t.c

CCleaner.com

 

[olebean]

I agree with admin AVG is pretty good as a freebie..


Try zonelabs for a free firewall and also spybot.info (search and destroy)

 

[retired_member16]

Great, I will give those a run out tonight too, thanks

 

[Whois-SearchWhois-Search is verified member.]

This is also really good:

Windows Defender

 

[Slater]

If you want the best Spyware/Adware blocker use Spyware Doctor

Download Spyware Doctor

Detects a lot of stuff that other spyware software (adaware, spybot, Windows defender etc) doesn't even pick up, you have to buy a copy for it to clean stuff off.

Have now used this on around a dozen PC's that were exhibiting signs of Spyware attack and it had cleaned them up OK where other Spyware software has struggled to detect the infection.

Runs in background as well preventing re-infection.

AVG is a good free virus scanner.

Run through a disk defrag as well might speed disk access up a little.

 

[Jeewhizz]

AVG is quite popular, but i've found avast to be better at actually removing viruses...

 

[stender]

I recommend avast and also startup inspector.