[clue-talk] Windows uggh!

[David L. Willson]

Windows viruses suck, and there's NO way to clean them reliably, other than FFR (Fdisk, Format, Reinstall).

Having said that, here's my recommended cocktail, in approximate order of use.

 - Antivir
 - PREVX
 - www.VirusTotal.com
 - Malware Bytes Anti-Malware
 - Spybot S&D
 - HiJack This!

Remember that <ctrl>+<shift>+<esc> takes you directly to Task Manager. That's sometimes handy. And the "run" key location that Matt gave. "msconfig" is a kinder, gentler startup manager/troubleshooter.

All the products have a free (gratis) version. I stop working as soon as the the symptoms are gone and whatever products I'm using are scanning clean.

If the system is non-usable, I connect the hard drive to my Linux system and scan with Antivir from there. That usually cleans it enough that it can load and run other tools, but sometimes it destroys the OS.