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How do I delete spyware?
What is the best way to delete spyware from my machines?
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4 Answers
Mike,
It really depends on what your machine is infected with. While there is probably no fullproof way to simply delete spyware, there are many tools out there than can scan your machines and remove most of the more common malware infections.
Microsoft offers a FREE (for home use) antimalware product that can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
Avira, AVG and Avast also offer free products that can be used to scan and clean your machine.
Free web based scanners such as Housecall by Trendmicro have also been known to rid machines of malware.
Finally, a good spyware scanner such as Malware-bytes Antimalware or Ad-Aware are good supplements to the software mentioned above.
If the system restore feature is turned on on any of the infected machines, turn it off prior to scanning. The restore points created by system restore are a common hiding place for many types of malware.
I hope this helps. Good luck!
Branden
Mike,
There is no silver bullet. I've used Symantec (serveral different versions), Panda Corporate and several others. There is always something that slips through. As Branden indicated there are many free tools out there (though not necessarily for a corporate environment). There are a few tricks I've learned after many years.
1) Keep your favorite AV/AS tools handy.
2) Keep a current copy of Sysinternals (available from Microsoft).
3) If the PC is local, disconnect it from the network to keep it from downloading more headaches.
Many of the latest spyware/viruses are very sophisticated. They disable Task Manager, Regedit, Autoruns (from Sysinternals) and other AV products. Find the file(s)/folder(s) the spware is loading from and deny security to all users to the folder/file. Then reboot. If you still have issues, you probably have stuff being loaded from another location. Track it down and deny access to it and reboot again. When you've stopped the loading of the spyware/virus use Autoruns to disable loading of any suspicious items. Be careful not to stop parts of Windows loading. Then take ownership of the bad files/folders and delete them. I've used this technique many times to recover a PC quickly.
You may not be able to stop the stuff getting through but being able to recover a PC in 30 minutes can be a real life saver.
Theoretically, "any" AV vendor should be able to remove spyware. But unfortunately, this is not the reality.
So you better go for a second opinion to SpyBot, Adaware, Webroot, PC Tools.
Or... why don't you try Hitman Pro (www.hitmanpro.com). They offer a free second opinion service. No installation required, just run off USB drive or hard drive.
There is a free tool online called spybot. You can install this tool and remove most of the spyware(according to me the best available). If you still feel there is a problem, you will be required to format the system (always the last option) and install a good anti virus after that.
Regards,
Anish Sai
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