Getting Rid of Viruses and Malware

Here are 3 tips to help if you are having trouble with viruses or other type of malware on your computer:

Method 1 – Perform A System Restore

System restores are a good way to get rid of light malware and spyware programs. They require no downloading of any software and can be performed directly by Windows.

System restores work best if you catch the intrusion right away. But, you do not want to do a system restore if you believe that you have had malware, spyware, or viruses on your computer for any significant amount of time.

This could cause you to lose files, applications, or data. To do a system restore in Windows, navigate to the control panel using the path Start > Control Panel. Click the Recovery icon located within the Control Panel and hit the Open System Restore button on the next screen.

The rest of the process is very straightforward as the Windows Wizard will guide your through it.

Method 2 – Scans

There are thousands of different programs out there in the spyware/virus removal category, many of which are free. The thing to remember is that different virus removal programs will bring different results; and none of them are 100% completely accurate.

For example, you can scan your computer with one virus removal program, remove the viruses… then turn around a scan your computer with a different program, which will catch even more viruses that the first program didn’t pick up.

However, you do not want to stack tons of virus removal programs on top of each other. Doing so can actually throw off effectiveness. One good antivirus scanner should be enough.

We recommend Microsoft Security Essentials. Aside from the virus scanner, it is also wise to use a spyware and malware scanner. Two great choices that you can check out are Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy.

Method 3 – Clean Install

A clean install is not the most fun thing to do. However, a clean install is the one guaranteed way to get rid of viruses, spyware, and malware. It’s simple… when you do a clean install, you are deleting everything on your hard drive. Thus, no more viruses.

Most of the time, viruses will not infect items like pictures, text documents, videos, or MP3 files. If step 2 (scan), is not working for you, more than likely the virus is in your computer’s registry. This is good because you can backup all of your pictures, documents, etc… before doing the clean install. That way you will not lose anything important.

The most common way to backup files is by using an external hard drive, flash drive, or burning DVDs. Doing a clean install is not at all as hard as it may seem, it’s just time consuming because you have to wait for Windows to copy itself to your hard drive. You can read our previous article on how to perform a clean install. Enjoy!