Virus removal tools I use

[mikkh]

Security/fixing tools come and go, some outlive their usefulness, others were never that good in the first place

Here's my current one stop destination when trying to remove stubborn infections

www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/dl/125/

The beauty of these set of tools is that they are all one off in use, nothing get's installed or stays resident

I haven't tested the link, but you should be looking at 4 programs and being offered the first of 5 programs to download (adwcleaner)

It's dual language English/French in part, but the main interface is all English and it's an excellent program

The five programs are.....

Rkill a nifty little resident (malware) program killer that attempts to stop (mostly successfully) any infections already running
It is important to try this first if you want to defeat the nasty ones that seem to cling on

Junkware Removal tool is optional and can be flaky occasionally - it crashed once on me anyway

Adwcleaner is a good program and very thorough when hunting down traces of infections

Combofix I've long been a fan of, it only searches for the top 50 or so nastiest infections and like adwcleaner get's updated on a regular basis
and will prompt you to download the latest version if trying to use an older version

TDDSkiller is a specialist root kit removal tool from Kaspersky labs and worth running for peace of mind



Run 'MBAM' afterwards as a belt and braces fix just to prove all is good and you should be sorted



*NB having just (successfully) run JRT on my own (Win7 64 bit) machine, the time it crapped out on me was probably on an old XP machine

[Lynnrose]

Trying to 'Like' your post but not working for some reason

[jojo]

I like you both

[jojo]

It's rather sad that the trouble makers are so lively at the moment, they seemed to disappear off the radar for a while, apparently concentrating on what is profitable. (Or perhaps that generation grew up and we are now dealing with The Next Generation!)

Anyway, great tools mikkh. I've got combofix already, the other not.

I ran a scan with the latest incarnation of MWB today and it came up with a trogen hiding as a video driver. C:\WINDOWS\Installer\d83cc.msi Not sure how that got there, though that might be the point.

The latest version of MWB claims to deal with a number of different issues, including Rootkits.

I also found this recently, while continuing research into putting mini OS onto pen drives for problem solving. (Sort of Hiren's idea, but for personal use). Was going to post the results here but sadly, been a bit pre occupied lately with some important house renovations.

Looks like a lot of pretty good portable apps.

Any comments?

[Lynnrose]

Like button working now Could be the PC at work, maybe because I installed an add-on for Firefox to stop the 'unresponsive script' error I kept getting

[mikkh]

They're portable alright, but they also expire pretty quickly. I had one expire on me after a week, but mostly a couple of weeks or more between updates
This means I need to download the latest all the time, because a working connection is not guaranteed on an infected PC.

The fake security suite infections are pretty rife at the moment

[jojo]

That's a good point mikkh. One of the bugbears I have with Hirens and Falcon.

I've been looking at ways of cramming down XP as a basic OS to run various software programs. Many of the better ones on Hiren's need quite a lot of expertise, frankly. But more importantly, I have been working a project to make a personal disk, using fairly readily available software tools.

One option I did have is to use one of Gibson Researches' routines that shuts open ports. Some of these tend to make PCs almost unusable. I recall one which shut all the USB ports and was a devil to get rid of. Not sure if Gibson's has what I need, but that's the trail I'll be following when I come to that.

Another avenue I've been looking at is the number of services that can safely be switched off. It seem to be quite a few. I currently have 46 turned off and everything seems to be functioning fine. But it seems to me, the more of those I can reasonably do without, the more I can remove from the install. nlite seems to be the most proven and usable.

Another track, which is purely an idea, is to use a minimal OS as a large capacity, USB pendrive host for a single application. Say a single game. But that's just my mind wandering a bit there.

The biggest problem I've had so far is with iso creators. Rufus for example, refuses to work with isos that are not created using one of 3 programs which I don't have. In any case, if they need to be paid for, it rather defeats the point.

I gave my copy of Hiren's to a nephew to play with and ended up using my copy of Falcon a while ago. I did rather criticise it because the tools seemed to have come from a single source which incorporates a rather sinister routine. But having been pushed, I have to say, I think I agree with you, it is rather better than Hiren's.

Anyway, enough of my ramblings. While I have to chase builders and supplies, computing tends to take something of a back seat.