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Did the homepage in your internet browser recently change to a directory
site you don't recognize, full of advertisements for real estate and questionable
procedures for enhancing various body parts? Do pop-ups begin appearing as
soon as you go on the internet that come so fast you can barely get any work
done? Does your computer operate much slower than it used to, and do your
friends all complain at lunch that somebody has been spoofing their e-mail
to send viruses? Any of these things should set off an alarm bell in your
head that your PC may have been taken over by malware. If you're patient,
and you're not afraid to use Google and do a lot of research, you can repair
even the worst malware infestations by yourself and it won't cost you a dime,
but it could take you days.
The best way to protect yourself is to always run virus and adware protection,
and to install the latest security patches to you operating system when the
system prompts you that their may be updates available. My personal favorites
are Grisoft AVG Anti Virus and Lavasoft Adaware, for which I purchase multi-year
licenses of the professional versions. Free versions and low cost options
are available from both. Once configured (which they'll do automatically
if you tell them) it's pretty much fire and forget. If you have Windows XP
installed, you can easily check the status of your security setup with the
Security Center icon in Control Panel.
If you keep your protection updated, the only problems you're likely to encounter
are the "unknown unknown" threats that everybody is vulnerable to, but then
you wouldn't be reading this page if your protection was up-to-date. When
I encounter a really messed up system, I start by going to the
Microsoft
update site and installing all of the available security updates for
the Windows and Internet Explorer. This will immediately fix some browser
hijacks, allowing you to reset your homepage to something reasonable, like
Google. Next I download the
free version of AVG and run it. After that I
download Adaware
and run it. These two steps can take a couple hours if the infections are
widespread and your broadband connection is being shared with endless pop-ups.
If you don't have a cable modem or DSL, I would try to find a friend to download
the install programs for you and give them to you on CD or you might never
get started. The Microsoft update is really best done online, because the
installer quickly determines what components you have that are out of date.
Doing the above will rarely fix all of your problems is you're computer is
really messed up. Next you have to make note of any malware that Adaware
or AVG identifies but can't remove, and search with Google for the free tools
that will remove that exact problem. In doing so, you have to avoid the very
same people who wrote the trojans selling you real or fake fixes. I have
yet to encounter a problem that didn't have a free fix from a good netzien.The
program HijackThis (great name) is actually good for identifying all of the
processes running on your computer, but it takes more expertise to interpret
the data than you're likely to have.
Now here's the bottom line. I run a moderate a large discussion list of
independent computer business owners, and there's a fair consensus that repairing
a massive malware infection isn't fair to the average home user. In other
words, if it takes a pro 6 or 8 hours to fix the problem, it's going to cost
you hundreds of dollars, or as much as a new PC. The solution they usually
suggest is to nuke the hard drive and reinstall the software, after rescuing
your address book and any other really critical data you may have. When it
comes down to dollars and cents, most people find that the data they have
stored on the hard drive isn't worth as much as they would have guessed.
This comes up frequently with physical hard drive failures when the only
option is a data recover outfit that takes the drive apart to read the platters
in a special jig and charges from $500 to $1000 if it works. Nobody ever
says "yes" unless it's a business, or an only copy of a novel or thesis.
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