Tech News Beats

Virus have become a scare now a days. They are not just used to attack your computer and cause harm, but other derivatives like spyware, adware steals information etc. So in the first place you would like to stop them from infecting your computer. However, if your computer is infected what you would do? Take help from your techie friend or call any technical support! Any decent technical support will cost you a huge sum ranging from an incident plan of $25 to annual plan of around $200. If you are not ready to spend that sum and your techie friend do not turn up, what would you do? Here I will discuss how you can yourself by following steps I will show, can remove virus comfortably.

Steps to remove virus from computers:

1. If the computer is on then shut it down. Keep tapping F8 and start the computer simultaneously and select “safe mode with networking” from the Advanced Boot Menu by using the arrow keys and press the “Enter” key on the keyboard.

Note: The reason we go to safe mode is because, most viruses do not function in safe mode.

2. Delete Temp (temporary) files.

For Windows XP – Click on “start” button the desktop and select “Run”. In the run text box type “%temp%” and press “Enter”.

For Windows Vista and Windows 7 – Click on “Windows logo” and on the search box just above the Windows logo, type “%temp%” and press “Enter”.

Now the “Temp” folder will open. Select all the files and press Shift + Delete to delete the files.

3. Delete prefetch files.

For Windows XP – Click on “start” button the desktop and select “Run”. In the run text box type “prefetch” and press “Enter”.

For Windows Vista and Windows 7 – Click on “Windows logo” and on the search box just above the Windows logo, type “prefetch” and press “Enter”.

Now the “Prefetch” folder will open. Select all the files and press Shift + Delete to delete the files.

4. If virus like XP anti virus, MS Removal Tool are running or keeps poping up, look for them in the task manager and close it. Also, you can disable them in services. To access services follow the steps below:

For Windows XP – Click on “start” button the desktop and select “Run”. In the run text box type “services.msc” and press “Enter”.

For Windows Vista and Windows 7 – Click on “Windows logo” and on the search box just above the Windows logo, type “services.msc” and press “Enter”.

5. Download the free version of Malwarebytes and ran a virus scan. Following the scan if there is any infection it will show and give you the option to delete them. After you remove the virus, it may ask you to restart. To learn how it works watch the video below.

6. If Malwarebytes does not help, then try Hitman pro. Before downloading check the if the system is 32 bit or 64 bit as Hitman Pro has different version of 32 bit and 64 bit.

7. Try TDS Killer from Kaspersky. Download TDS Killer.exe file and ran a scan for Rootkits.

8. Try Combofix. It is a freeware but a very good software to remove virus. It is available for free download. While you run Combofix you may loose internet connection temporarily.

9. You may also try SuperAntispyware. You may try this only when none of the other software given here helped.

10. If you are unable to run or access the computer even in safe mode then create a new user account and login to that. Now start running the software. If they do not detect anything, go to the user account which is affected and look for suspicious files. Confirm with the user, if they are aware of such file, if not, delete it. Then try going to the affected user account and run the anti virus software.

11. If after virus removal, you face issues with file association or running .exe files on Windows XP then try the tweaks from Kellys Korner XP.

12. If nothing works and severe damage is done. Then we have two options left:

1. If there is important data on the computer then you should take the hard disk to a local vendor to check if the data can be backed then perform a clean installation of operating system. That is you should format your hard drive and install your Windows OS again.

2. If there is no important data then you can go ahead and do a clean installation of Windows OS.

Successful websites takes a lot of hard work, patience and time to reach that mark. If you lose your database, just think what a catastrophe it will be? Your months or years of work is gone. What a frustration it will be to start from the scratch. So safe keeping of your database is very important. It is important to backup the database and need to have multiple copies at different places. However, if you do not have multiple copies or any backup and you lost your database then what? Will it be possible to retrieve those data? What a million dollar question, is not it!

The answer is yes, to an extent. However, you may not be able to retrieve all of your web pages. I will tell you how. Have you heard of Cache memory in a computer? Cache memory is random access memory (RAM) that a computer microprocessor can access more quickly than it can access regular RAM. As the microprocessor processes data, it looks first in the cache memory and if it finds the data there (from a previous reading of data), it does not have to do the more time-consuming reading of data from larger memory.

The same way search engines like Google also cache the search results like various pages of websites or blogs. So that they can provide faster search result when people are searching. When you search on Google you should see a “Cached and Similar pages” link just besides website link on the right hand side. So if you have lost any webpage, search for that particular page and if you find that link, click on the “Cached” link and it will give that page. Now you can go to source of the page through your browser and copy the source code. Then you can upload the page again on your web server. For blogs you can create the new post with the same details and it will be back dated post. However, Google has time limit of 1 day to 3 months. However, you can try one cache engine called “Gigablast.com” which gives result in terms of your time preference.

I can tell you it works to a large extent, as I have tried it myself. However, you should try this soon after you database is lost.