How To Find A Remove Viruses Without Reformatting Computer
Aug 23, 2012
i have recently landed a job where i will be trouble shooting windows systems. this has brought me to realize hey i have no idea how to find a remove viruses without reformatting the computer. nor do i know how to check a file to see if it was safe or not, even if i opened it in a virtual pc or sandbox.currently i have no money, so going to school for a computer science education is not in my near future, but i have access to books and internet resources that i can learn on my own from. so what i need help with is where should i start. can anyone give some advice of how to go from a user that knows how to download drivers for your video card and replace broken hard drives to someone that can find viruses you never knew you had. what should i learn first so i am not watching Internet lectures that are above my head thus i don't get much from them.
�Windows Defender� is built into Windows 7. Does Windows Defender remove Spyware and Viruses? Windows Defender has a scanner. Is Windows Defender reasonably reliable in removing bad software?
"Note: To protect against computer viruses, e-mail programs may prevent sending or receiving certain types of file attachments. Check your e-mail security settings to determine how attachments are handled" appears in emails with attachments that I send from Win 7. Default email client is Thunderbird, but from what I can gather, the message is Windows-generated.
I found one site that mentioned editing the registry, but when I went to the supposed location in the registry there's nothing there remotely similar to the so called "tip" someone suggested. I've found no other instances of suggestions on how to eliminate that message.
i recently bought a new computer with an installed Win7HomePremium. It is fairly good and these are a few of the properties:
-Intel i3 540 -4GB memory -32bit OS
I was wondering what programs you can suggest me, I'm getting mixed messaged from all kinds of people on what software i should(n't) download and its getting annoying.So a general question could be what programs u suggest me to use in order to keep my computer swift and powerful and without viruses? It should be noted that the person who recomended these to me has a computer since 2003 which she uses the progs to clean it every 2-3 days. And it's working great, or so she says.So in addition it could be awesome if anyone can give me ONE answer instead of the mixed opinions - whether or not should i clean my computer by running such software and if so which ones and how often? Also is it true that IE is regarded as a problematic browser? I switched to Chrome without erasing IE and so far it's fairly good (except for random slow downs and sites not opening , and especially having trouble being on facebook too long )One more question that i believe , out of anyone, you can help with: By default, the folders are presented in list-like formation and it's kinda tiring going over every folder and ordering them differently. Can I do anything to make all of the folders sort in a different way? and possibly one of the more important ones - my technician told me that if i were to format my PC, and i'd have at that point over 200GB taken (out of the 500 i have ), the computer will erase some of MY files as well. If that is true - that's completely stupid. Is it ? And if so what should i do? (have one partition)BTW I often see all kinds of short versions of words here, like BSOD, SSD, UAC and what not. It would be very nice of you, considering many of the readers don't know these terms, to simply write the full word. It doesn't take much time.
My dad's laptop had gotten a bunch of viruses/rootkits, so I decided to use KillDisk and erase everything with one pass.
Everything gets done and I reinstall Win 7 Home Premium 64bit. Install everything and use the laptop like normal.
For the first five minutes, everything is fine. Loads programs up in a couple of settings.
After the five minutes, it starts getting very slow. The mouse is lagging. Everything takes a couple of minutes to load. The only thing I even did besides have it on was install Windows Update when you first reformat.
After a few more KillDisks and reformatting. the same problem is happening. I know rootkits are harder to kill than most, but can it be possible it is STILL alive?
I also am thinking maybe something inside the laptop is wrong (CPU, HDD.) How would I be able to check this to let you guys know? I will try the HP Recovery Manager in a while and see if there is any difference.
A friend of mine gave me his computer to perform a quick reformat intoIt had two hard drives, and asked me to please reformat all of them. However One of the hard drives was not being detected with windows, so I went to disk manager, and formatted/shut it off.Now whenever I try to boot back into windows I get the message Grub Rescue, and am unable to boot into windows.I do not have a linux CD, and I only have a windows 7 professional installation disk which is not working since I get the message ''Windows has encountered a problem communicating with a device connected to your computer''Status 0xc00000e9If I try to boot windows from an USB flash, it does not get recognized and it displays Grub rescue again
[code] My computer was stuttering badly recently. It runs smoothly in games like FIFA 12 initially, but after a period of time (could be 5 minutes or an hour), the game starts to stutter. FPS doesn't really drop but the game stutters so badly I couldn't even play it. As I exit and try to load Skyrim, the initial loading might take up to 5 minutes, which is incredulous even when loading the world map. That aside, Firefox was also stuttering whenever I tried to scroll, be it a page full of graphics, a text file or pdf.All these problems could be 'reset' by restarting my computer but the symptoms just come back soon after. Thought I might have too many programs installed, so I decided to reformat my computer and reinstall a clean copy of Windows 7 Ultimate x64. Didn't really help though. After installing all my drivers, the problems persist.I am currently using AVG as anti-virus and didn't detect any rootkit virus or anything.
My CPU temperatures are fairly normal for Core 2 Duo E6600, doesn't go past 60C in the tropics. The CPU loads <10% when idle and max out when playing games. Same goes for GPU. None of them are overclocked. The problems only happen in the past month or so. Encountered no such problem previously, therefore I suspect it could be fault on the hardware part.
Any website I try to go to, an alert pops up saying that it contains viruses and it recommends that I download "Win 7 Home Security" or something like it. Alerts also pop up telling me of spyware and other things my computer are being attacked by, and it again prompts me to purchase "Win 7 Home Security" I'm pretty sure this Win 7 thing is a virus. My friend told me he had it before and that he had to wipe his PC clean. Maybe I need to do that, but I don't know how. Do I need to wipe my PC completely clean? How would I go about doing that?
Just formatted my system after it was invaded with some trojans. But now, AVG doesn't detect any viruses or malware at all, yet when I open Task Manager, my system CPU usage is hovering from 77-100 percent. Computer is running really slowly too.
I've been running microsoft security essentials for a while, and didn''t have any problems. Now I tried another virus scan, and i did see all kind of problems, so microsoft security essentials doesnt really work.But the problem is, I cant finish the scan, because i get a bsod during the scan. I've tried scanning with antimalwarebytes, same problem.Dump file is in attachments.
I am new to Windows 7 and have just come across the Vrtualization featuers. They seem interesting but I am not 100% sure of how they work.There are certain apps out there in my industry that people suspect might not be "clean" but they are very good at what they do. So I want to be protected from them. I used to use, Sandboxie with my Win XP setup.If I install or run a virus/maleware infected application, can I do so in a Virtualized way so that it doesn't infect the rest of my system?
anyway - i just unplugged everything from my system, to install a new graphics card, and at the same time dust around it, tidy up etc. including an external hard disc which is connected full time, and is assigned, or was assigned drive F.as i had an onboard card originally, i had difficulty with the install, so had to reset the bios by removing the battery.everything works fine now, except i have a phantom cd drive in F it doesn't show in the device manager, and it isn't in disc management either.the biggest poblem is i have an external drive which has 500gig of projects, photos and video, which are all linked to adobe lightroom, premiere and after effects, and now they are all broken links, unless i can assign the drive which has now been assigned to E, back to F where it should be.
I got a virus, when I accessed a website, and something was added to my Roaming folder. I immediately ended the process it started in task manager, and deleted the folder, but afterwards my computer lost its firewall and Microsoft Security Essentials went kablooey. After completely screwing up my computer using all this antivirus and virus deletion software (I scanned multiple times, It found the virus and *said* it deleted it, but another scan again would say otherwise. So after I screwed up my computer to the point that it wouldn't go into the loading screen for Windows, I did a System Restore.
I restored back 4 days before the virus incident had been downloaded, and despite people saying system restore won't fix it, my internet is back online, and I'm having no problems. Firewall and Windows update is back and working, and even Microsoft Security Essentials is back online. I'm scanning for viruses right now, so I want an honest opinion from T.H, and if you guys have a proper virus deletion thing that will actually delete it, not to come back several minutes later. Also, how do I stop websites automatically downloading things to my roaming folder (%appdata%)?
I've been hit by viruses in the past months and I believe that ever since I got this computer - less than a year ago, there were problems with the security as I've had a difficult time updating Windows, and maybe that's the reason I got hit twice in less than one year, even though I used virus protection and firewall. So I figure, since I don't have this computer for very long, there isn't that much stored , so I might as well back up and store whatever is on the HD and reformat the system, start afresh. I did once reformat an old computer - it was Win XP, and that is all the experience I have had so far, so I'm wondering if anyone has any pointers for me before I start. In general I believe I only need to insert the OS disk and reboot, making sure it boots from disk, and then wait for prompts and choose to reformat.
After having tons of issues with my PC, I finally got around to reformating and reinstalling XP for the first time since 2009. Around the same time I ordered a Windows 7 Pro Upgrade disc online, but went ahead and reinstalled XP to get me going while I waited for Windows 7 to arrive.As usual, XP was a PITA to reinstall. Had to get on the laptop to find an Intel ethernet driver for the mobo just to be able to get online, and then had to find drivers for other stuff after getting a whole list of yellow 's in the hardware listWell yesterday Windows 7 arrived, and I installed it last night, doing another format of the entire 250GB C drive and installing Windows 7 fresh. Everything went so smoothly, I was amazed. It picked up all the drivers it needed, and when everything was finished I ended up with only a single for the Intel Simple Communications Controller, which was remedied with another driver for the Intel mobo.
I've been using Windows 7 x64 at my office for 3 years now, but it has been some time since I've done a fresh install of it. Sooo much easier than XP in just about every way. *edit* I did install the x86 version since I'm still only running 3 GB RAM. In the near future I plan on upgrading the CPU and mobo and installing 16 GB RAM along with Windows 7 x64. Hope I don't have any issues being that this Windows is an upgrade version and there won't be any trace of XP when I do the hardware upgrades.
I read about the fact that windows 7 doesn't reformat the harddrives and leaves all your old clutter on and just creates a new section of clutter.
I read I could pick to repartion if if restarted booting up from Windows 7 on the CD.. Which I did, but never saw any offer to repartion (which I would love to do because my drive on XP had to be spliced into 2 partiions because XP could not handle the size.. I would love to go to one partion.) But I know repartioning also reformats..
Anyway I guess I did a clean install (although I saw nothing that offered the clean install, but I know moving for XP to 7 needed that.)
It just forced me to put everythine into a windows.old folder (which I can't find).. And looking at my drive the either windows 7 is a REAL pig, or yup... my old data is eatting up my space with it's clutter. Although 7 is up, I want a redo.. Can anyone tell me how to do it right with a repartion and format?
Tonight I was reformatting my external hard drive when I accidentally chose the wrong drive and reformatted my internal hard drive. My screen went black and now I have a computer with no operating to boot up. What are my chances of recovering? How can I recover my hard drive?
P. S. I tried doing a system restore and my disks hang on 80% completion twice now.
I had the google redirect virus.. tried removing it myself through different methods.. still remained, so I decided to back up all my things and just reformat and reinstall. yesterday I did a dell factory image restore though, instead of doing a OS re-installation using my windows 7 disc, entering my product key etc (probably should have...)long story short: my mouse is lagging. i should note it started to lag before i did the factory restore also. at that point i figured it was just the virus/malware.but it's still here and driving me crazy. i googled and poked around the forums- following different advice to no avail. i performed all of the dell hardware diagnostic tests- passed them. i've done sfc /scannow 3+ times. tells me there are corrupt files but are unable to fix them. log shows:
2012-08-09 15:48:26, Info CSI 00000200 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:20{10}]"tcpmon.ini" of Microsoft-Windows-Printing-StandardPortMonitor-TCPMonINI, Version = 6.1.7600.16385, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_AMD64 (9), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS,
Here is the link to the old foru:am trying to figure out if I should just go ahead and do a clean [re]install or create a partition first. I am not good with partitions.
When I reboot the laptop to install Windows XP, it goes well. But when it comes to the page where you can Select, Delete or Create a partition, the laptop's system drive is not showing. The page only shows the USB drive as my drive C, because it is my priority right? So now, I cannot reformat the laptop because the system drive of the laptop is not showing. What and where is the problem? Is it the bootable USB? or there is another way to make a downgrade? or the problem is my system drive?
I've been directed over here by the malware board. My computer has a rootkit virus and it has been recommended to me that I reformat my hardrive. I am terrified of doing it wrong and would feel comfortable if one of your clever folk could help me through it. I have windows 7 home premium on a sony viao with a 64bit operating system. I can't seem to find any recovery disks,on the system restore options its seems i can only restore it to an earlier point in time.
I mistakenly deleted the recovery partition when I was trying to formatting the hard drive, I dont know much about how it works so what would be the best way to remake it and have it function the same way the other one did (which I also dont know how that worked) or is there a better method. This is also a new Samsung hard drive with windows 7 Home premium
My PC is set up for dual booting...first OS installed is Windows XP sp3 and the second is Windows 7 Ultimate x32. Both are installed on separate hard drives. I want to reformat the drive with Windows 7 on it and do a clean install of itctions on how to do this? For some reason I can't get the PC to boot up with the DVD disc instead of the hard drives, and I don't know much about the BIOS to mess around in there.
So my PC was recently infected with viruses, and I was able to get rid of them with Malware bytes and Microsoft Security Essentials.I;m not sure if I completely got rid of the viruses so I want to just completely wipe my hard drive and get rid of it all. When I go to reformat my Hard Disk, Windows says I cannot because it's in use.I google'd around and some guides are saying that I'd be able to reformat and boot up through the Win. 7 installation disk; the problem is that I don't have a Win 7. installation disk.
I'm going to be reformatting my hard drive. However this time around I realized I might have a problem.
I originally purchased my pc with windows vista, but then when windows 7 came out I purchased it and immediately installed it on my computer. Bottom line, the factory image of my drive contains windows vista and my current operating system is windows 7.
So, If i go ahead and reformat my hard drive my system will revert back to windows vista (right?). I still have the windows 7 installation cds and the product key. So, can I just reformat and then just simply reinstall windows 7 with the cds and the product key? Or is it more complicated than that?
