Virus and spyware removal is generally pretty easy.
As any good piece of antivirus/spyware removal software worth its salt should do just everything for you.
How can we confirm a virus has been removed completely?
After all no antivirus software can offer 100% protection against all virus’s and spyware, and how did your computer become infected in the first place?
Call me paranoid but if a client has a virus issue which is very common, even though many are running some of the most well known virus and spyware products on the market the first thing I do is to run another scan using another product or even two, this increases the chances of picking up something that has been missed, and helps to confirm a virus has been removed .
Like everyone I have my favorites, currently they include Microsoft security essentials, Malwarebytes and Spybot search and destroy, all of which are freely available.
One of the main reasons for a computer becoming infected and re-infected is missing security patches, without these existing security exploits are left un-patched making it relatively easy for new viruses and malware to get onto your computer undetected.
Aside from this, if the root of a virus or malware is not properly removed re-infection is common, many so called super viruses and spyware now adopt of host of features to protect themselves against removal, this includes cloaking or masking to evade detection, preventing the antivirus software from running, or new applications from being installed.
If this is the case then in my opinion the best virus and spyware removal method is to stop its process from running then it can be removed while inactive.
This can either be done by manually killing its process, this can be similar to looking for a needle in a haystack though, applications such as process explorer can this a bit easier by allowing you to see which applications are using the process.
Perhaps the best method to confirm a virus has been removed is to remove the hard drive and pop it into an external caddy and scan it from another computer this will ensure the virus is dormant and not able to protect itself, then it can easily be found and removed.
This is one of the main reasons for persistent viruses, many people will presume that the issue is with the Antivirus product not being able to clear the virus properly in the first place.
Today a modern computer user needs to be very virus and spyware aware
By this I mean don’t simply rely on your virus and spyware removal software to offer complete protection as it won’t, you also need to make sure your Windows patches are up to date, enable Windows auto updates so you won’t miss any.
Never open email attachments unless your 100% sure what they are, even if they are from friends, as many viruses have the ability to send emails in an attempt to infect other computers.
Never open links within emails, especially from your bank or other confidential party.
Of course you can never be 100% protected, but you can be 99.9%
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