I’ve been helping people to remove trojan, virus, spyware and unnecessary programs from Windows startup for many years now. It’s very interesting because you will learn the Windows startup methods from finding out where will the program be hidden. The old method by running System Configuration Utility(msconfig) doesn’t work so well now because there are many other ways to start the programs when Windows is being booted up without being displayed in System Configuration Utility(msconfig). Even some smart trojans are hidden from Task Manager, Processes tab.
Spywares, it is by nature to create random filenames and file sizes so avoid detection. That is why you always need 2-3 antispywares to completely remove spywares. Using anti-spyware software such as Ad-Aware, SpyBot and XoftSpy is good to identify spyware files but I can assure you that it’s not smart enough to 100% completely remove trojan, virus or spyware from startup. For example, one of my friend’s computer has been infected by spyware because everything is so slow. I find it hard to even download, update or copy the anti-spyware scanners to the computer. However, I manage to copy the updated anti-spyware software to the computer, scanned it, and removed the potential infections. I restarted the computer and it is still slow. That shows that spyware is still being ran during startup.
I am going to show you one of the best way to remove trojan, virus or spyware from startup but it requires you have at least some knowledge in computers, otherwise you’ll be removing the wrong startup programs which may cause the Windows to be unbootable.
HijackThis is a general homepage hijackers detector and remover. Hijackers are spywares, trojans and viruses. They infect your computer without your knowledge.
Initially based on the article Hijacked!, but expanded with a lot of other checks against hijacker tricks. It is continually updated to detect and remove new hijacks. It does not target specific programs/URLs, just the methods used by hijackers to force you onto their sites.
As a result, false positives are imminent, and unless you are sure what you’re doing, you should always consult with knowledgeable folks from forums before deleting anything or you can go a Google search on the filename to know if that file is a virus.
There are 2 types of scan methods.
1. Do a system scan and save a logfile.
– This is for newbie who doesn’t want to mess around with their computers. It will scan your computer and create a hijackthis.log file which you can paste it to forums and request for help.
2. Do a system scan only.
– Same as first method but it doesn’t create log files. Mostly for advance user who would like to troubleshoot themselves.
Again I would like to stress out that IF you’re unsure what to fix after running the scan, please request for help in forums. Simply removing any startup programs would result in an unbootable Windows.
