[kwlug-disc] [way OT] how to de-virus someone's windows box?

[Raul Suarez]

Two things:

1. Unless it is close family: (father, sister, child) or a provider that will give his/her services for free too, tell them to take it to a $50 virus removal service. It will be cheaper than your time plus they have the tools and the expertise. (My son does it for $40 and lives the computer running faster than before).

2. Advise them to always use antivirus and be very careful when they click on things they don't know the source of. The free antivirus are fairly good.

3. If it already has antivirus instaleld and you really want to learn how to do it. You'll need to download some live CD antivirus like Panda. Run it before you run the installed one. If it does not get rid of it, run the installed one. If it does not work, you'll need to research what kind of virus it is and how to remove it manually. Frequently some viruses hide other viruses, so once you remove one, be ready to remove the next one.

Check the "Run" registry key for current user and for local machine. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, then go to step 1)

4. Yes, frequently the cleanup install is necessary if it is one of those very nasty virus.

Raul Suarez

Technology consultant
Software, Hardware and Practices
_________________
Twitter: rarsamx
http://rarsa.blogspot.com/ 
An eclectic collection of random thoughts


--- On Mon, 7/19/10, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca> wrote:

> From: Robert P. J. Day <rpjday at crashcourse.ca>
> Subject: Re: [kwlug-disc] [way OT] how to de-virus someone's windows box?
> To: "KWLUG discussion" <kwlug-disc at kwlug.org>
> Received: Monday, July 19, 2010, 5:04 AM
> On Mon, 19 Jul 2010, Johnny Ferguson
> wrote:
> 
> > I think the only humane thing to do is take it out
> back with a
> > shotgun and put the poor thing out of its misery.
> >
> > Alternatively, I used to swear by Avira Antivir.
> Viruses are nasty
> > though. I was hit by one that corrupted every archive
> file on my
> > system. I lost quite a lot of important stuff, and was
> finally
> > pushed into using linux.
> >
> > I think the basic steps are:
> >
> > 1. Find out what the virus is
> >
> > 2. Find out what it can do
> >
> > 3. Salvage data accordingly
> >
> > 4. Get out the windows CD and get ready to spend the
> next hour
> > clicking buttons and installing drivers for
> everything.
> 
>   and that's a road down which i really don't want to
> go.  i mean, i'm
> fairly smart and i'm sure i could figure out how to be
> moderately
> helpful, but unless i *really* know what i'm doing, there's
> a good
> chance i can make things worse.  so i'd rather be able
> to just give
> some generic advice -- perhaps a utility that simply
> *identifies* the
> viruses -- then point the person in the direction of
> someone way
> better at it than i am.
> 
> rday
> 
> -- 
> 
> ========================================================================
> Robert P. J. Day           
>                
>    Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA
> 
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>                
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> 
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