Today's computer viruses are no longer those of the past that did damage to the computer even going to prevent it from being turned on, but they are more subtle and intelligent, perhaps asking for the ransom to free personal files or by installing silent programs that go to steal data or undermine bitcoins. The viruses and malware of recent years, in fact, are not created to destroy but to earn, through blackmail or by exploiting the processing power of the victims' PC to perform various types of operations, such as that to undermine bitcoins or perform DDOS attacks.
In general, however, the least easy to detect malware are those that capture the user's personal data for advertising purposes, so as to send them emails, banners or commercial proposals based on the sites visited.
In the most serious cases, they are malware that intend to steal passwords and access information, for example, to a bank account, Ebay, Facebook or Paypal, which leverage people's paranoia to blackmail them and take money from them.
The viruses that blackmail instead are represented by naively downloaded programs thinking to do well that instead turn out to be terrible viruses that put the user in front of an ultimatum : either buy the program or your computer will no longer work.
There are also fake antiviruses, fake programs that solve computer problems and others that I talked about in the article about programs that should never be installed on your PC (like Acestream)
In some cases the virus, masked under the name of a program that seems normal, can prevent the startup of the task manager, it no longer starts the PC in safe mode and does not allow you to install real anti-malware and antivirus programs.
Removing it, at this point, can become a serious problem even having installed the best antivirus possible.
On the Lavasoft website you can find an encyclopedia of malware while in another article we have seen what Trojan, Worms and Virus are malware and types of PC infections.
If you find that you have downloaded a virus program or if you recognize one of the signals of a computer infected with a virus, we see here how to proceed manually to remove any malware permanently, even if the antivirus had been ineffective or impossible to start.
To make a scheme on how to remove malware manually that is understandable and simple for everyone, we list the steps to be taken on the Windows PC in order to be calm.
1) Go to the internet properties, to the connections tab and remove any proxies.
2) Open the Google Chrome browser and use the Chrome CleanUp tool to check for malicious extensions and malware that can affect internet browsing.
3) (only if experienced) Download and run the Process Explorer program (which does not require installation) and check if there are active processes on malicious Windows and terminate them.
4) To cut the bull's head and be sure to terminate malware activities, download and run rKill, to block all non-essential processes, including those of viruses (to be done both if you have used Process Explorer or not it's done).
5) Download and use the Autoruns program, another executable without installation, which allows you to control everything that starts automatically when you turn on the computer.
Autoruns indicates suspicious entries in red and missing references in yellow; these are all to be deleted.
6) Download SuperAntiSpyware in portable version to clean up your computer.
This program is strong because it is portable (one of the few and the best) and you don't have to install it but you can copy it on a USB stick, keep it and use it if necessary.
NOTE: If you are unable and unable to download any programs or are unable to start the SuperAntispyware scan, then you must run all these programs in safe mode.
If the safe mode is blocked then it may take a stronger program called ComboFix for the use of which I refer to the related article.
7) After scanning with SuperAntispyware, restart your computer and then download and install MalwareBytes antimalware and redo the scan with this other free security software among the best ever.
MalwareBytes is able to dig deep and update itself to completely remove all spyware and fake programs completely (SuperAntispyware removes processes and programs that load but does not remove all infected files).
8) To be more relaxed, do a further check with the powerful Hitman antivirus, made specifically to do a more thorough check.
This antivirus is not free, but it can be used for 30 days without limitations and that's what we need.
9) After removing the malware, if there are any malfunctions, you have to try to reset the damaged pc and restore the default settings .
10) Install a new, true and effective antivirus .
In Windows 10 you can just leave the Windows Defender antivirus active (and be sure it is), checking the Windows 10 security center.
Alternatively, you can install one of the best free antivirus programs that work great and should prevent other infections in the future.
In other articles, in addition to this guide, we have:
- Programs to remove viruses from the computer
- Removal of virus programs that take pc hostage
- Clean up your PC by removing malware and viruses manually
- How a virus or malware enters your computer and how it infects it
- protect web browsing by blocking access to sites with viruses and malware.
For any request or problem, please leave a comment and we try to give support for everyone.
