Spyware Gettin Ya Down?

[Deverill]

I found a really useful combination of tools that has helped a lot at work for our people who attract spyware programs to their systems.

 

HijackThis! is a program that goes through your system and creates a log of all the registry entries for non-standard stuff such as spyware toolbars and programs that start up with the computer. You can get it at http://merijn.org/downloads.html but be careful, you can really hurt yourself with it if you delete the wrong thing, but that's where Part II comes in!

 

If you copy your HijackThis log and paste it on the Help2Go Detective, it will go through and tell you the bad things and why they are bad, the questionable things, and how to remove the stuff that should go. The Detective is at http://help2go.com/modules.php?name=HJTDetective

 

I have had only good success with this combination but as I said, be careful... if you delete a windows system service or something it could result in a non-bootable machine. The Detective has never told me to remove anything that I shouldn't and I trust it completely, but always use common sense and err on the safe side if you have any doubts.

 

Hope it helps!

Edited November 30, 2005 by TCH-Jim

[TCH-Bruce]

Thanks Jim, I could have used this for a friend's machine. I got fed up with trying to fix it and told him to buy a new one! His old machine was Windows 98 so it really wasn't bad of me to tell him to get a new machine.

[Madmanmcp]

Jim, I've had Hijackthis in my toolbox for sometime now and use it for extreem cases. I don't usually recommend it to regular users because its very technical reading and can be dangerous if misread. And messing around with the registry is not for the faint of heart

 

I've also been to merijn.org and used CWShreader for a long time, there is lots of good advice and tools on that site.