Yesterday I shared my reasons for not using an anti-virus software in Windows XP. Today, I want to share how to optimize your PC and get rid of those pesky virus or malware or anything that has made your PC suffer. Especially those repeated pop ups that appear as your browse or icons that reappear after you delete them and restart your computer. Typically, a virus will replicate files such as malware, spyware, etc. even after you delete the offending files. In order to stop a virus, you will need to know what you have been infected with. Here are 5 simple steps to clean out your computer of any virus, malware, spyware, etc. on your computer:
- If you don’t have an anti-virus software installed, you can find one available online to do the job for you. I like to use TrendMicro House Call to scan for virus. It does take some time but it is effective in identifying the virus and either deleting or disinfecting it. Other anti-virus softwares offering an online virus scan are BitDefender or Panda Security. **You may have to use a combination of these scanners to effective remove a severely corrupted system also at times, they do not fully remove all malicious software because it is actually a running process.
- After you do your virus scan, I suggest downloading both a malware and spyware removal software. Two really great programs that I recommend would be Malwarebytes and Spybot Search & Destory. Both software are free to use and are very effective against removing both malware and spyware files. Another tool to use would be Adaware from Lavasoft to remove adwares, which is also free. Install the programs and do necessary updates. In some cases, you will probably not be able to do an update because your system is so corrupted with malware and viruses that its blocking some ports, access, and abilities of your PC. However, since you have downloaded it, lets go to the next step.
- Restart your Windows XP and get into its built in diagnostic mode called Safemode. After rebooting your computer, after the BIOS screens, start pressing F8 right before the Windows XP loading screen. This should take you to a prompt to let you choose option Safemode with Networking. Choose that option. **In Safe mode, you are able to load your computer with minimal drivers that are necessary to start the operating system, which means, none of the virus, malwares, etc. will be able to start. Once you are logged in, typically as administrator, you should install the programs in Step 2 and do all the necessary updates of definition files.
- Running through these software scanners will take some time, depending on how fast your CPU, hard disk drive and how many files you have. You will see how badly your computer is infected after running these scans and hopefully, these programs will remove, disinfect these unwanted files. It is also common that some files will be deleted upon your next restart so once your done scanning with each program, go ahead and restart your computer as normal.
- Once you start up your computer, you should have already removed the virus, any malware or spyware that was previously infecting your computer. However, just to make sure, I would run Malwarebytes or Spybot S&D again in your normal Windows XP environment to make sure it comes out clean. If it does not, you may have to restart because you did not eliminate the original virus which is still being loaded and replicating the malware, spyware, etc.
With these five steps, you will be able to reclaim your computer and Windows XP environment. Best of all, this will be FREE.
***Please note that taking these steps will at least remove common corruptions, but you will have to realize that if you have not kept your computer organized for a long time, the corruption may be too great and I recommend you reformatting your hard drive and putting a fresh install of your operating system such as Windows XP. For the most part, this is pretty effective and easy to do.
Good luck wiping out them viruses!