Infected by computer virus is one of the most annoying things. Your program won’t work properly, annoying messages always pop up, your identity is at risk, your privacy data is also at risk. And sometimes you don’t even know that you are infected as you are using your computer as usual, but some malformed information data is sent to another party without your permission.
Viruses could be in many forms, and they always grow and cannot be stopped. They have their own goal and self-defense. Some viruses disable your antivirus and then reproduce themselves, some of them destruct your data, some of them steal your keyboard input (known as a key logger), some of them steal your cookies and privacy data (known as a trojan), and some of them are used to attack another computer (known as a botnet).
So what to do when your computer is infected? Well, first of all, unplug your internet connection whether cable or wireless. You don’t want that virus to spread through the network. Then get another computer to research how to cure the virus. It’s better if you know the virus’s name.
To cure a virus, there are many ways and methods, but I will explain some of them which are free to use:
Avira AntiVir Rescue System
It’s a Linux distribution which has an Avira virus scanner and Avira virus signature to hunt and kill viruses on your hard drive. It is one of my favorite tools to clean viruses; it just works and viruses (Windows viruses) cannot run in a Linux environment. Download the ISO, and burn it to a CD. Then boot from that CD; it has a simple GUI that you can easily understand. Just a little configuration, then scan all the hard drives. Now just leave it until it is finished.
Norman Malware Killer
This is the second tool I run after Avira Rescue System. This standalone software (doesn’t need installation) operates on Windows. So I use it to make sure that my computer is clean. Download and run it, then scan all hard drives and partitions.
HijackThis
Trend Micro HijackThis is a free utility that generates an in-depth report of registry and file settings from your computer. HijackThis makes no separation between safe and unsafe settings in its scan results, giving you the ability to selectively remove items from your machine. In addition to this scan-and-remove capability, HijackThis comes with several tools useful in manually removing malware from a computer. This is for advanced users only.
So are there only 3 tools needed? Well, in most of my cases using the first 2 tools is enough to kill the viruses. If it is not clean yet, then ask the experts from the forum, and they will ask you for the HijackThis scan result to do a diagnosis. Last but not least, if it is really hard to clean the virus, then just reformat your hard drive and reinstall your OS.