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Removing a malicious program from your computer can be a tricky and time consuming thing. If you have support staff on hand or a technical support person that you can contact then doing so is a wise choice. Depending on the payload and severity of the virus that has infected your machine a professional opinion can help you determine if you are better off trying to remove the virus or reinstalling the whole Operating System(OS) and restoring your files from backup.
Computer Symptoms
Here are a few symptoms that can be caused by a computer virus infection:
1.Your computer might be running fine one day and suddenly the computer runs a lot slower than it used to.
2.The computer might run out of memory a lot, crash, reboot suddenly, etc.
3.You could see windows that only appear for a second and then disappear.
4.Files might become corrupt and unusable or disappear.
Technical Problems when removing a virus.
The main problem is that when malicious software infects your computer it is not something that you can just throw in the trash and delete. Most of the time the program is running in a hidden mode and does not show up in the Task List when you press CTRL+ALT+DEL (on a windows PC). You might only know that you have the virus if your anti-virus program is warning you that it found a virus and cannot “clean” the file. With these situations you will most likely have to start the computer up in what is called “Safe Mode” and then try to remove the virus. Some anti-virus programs will run in safe mode and remove the virus for you. If the virus is one that does not let itself be removed when in safe mode it would take less time to fix the machine by re-installing the computer's OS from scratch.
The key to removing the virus is somehow making it so that the program does not startup when you start your computer. There are a couple tools that you can use to figure out what is running in the background when you start your computer.
1.Regedit – This program is the registry editor. If you go to HKLM->Software->Microsoft->Windows>CurrentVersion>Run and review the entries. Sometimes there are items here that load the virus automatically on startup for all users of the computer.
2.Spybot (www.safer-networking.org) is a spyware removal tool. It has an easy to use interface to the above registry editor. To use it go to the Mode menu and choose Advanced. Then you can expand the startup editor under the Tools section. Just uncheck the items that you feel might be suspicious.
The Bottom Line
Virus removal is not always successful. If you are able to remove the virus and the symptoms that appeared with it are gone you should be okay for a while, but your security configuration on the computer should be reviewed since the likelihood that the infection will happen again is pretty good. Also, it is possible that there is something lingering that was not detected and removed. To be completely safe you should reinstall the OS.
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