One of the most important things you could download to your computer is an antivirus, considering that the 2.0 world has been experiencing a massive improvement not only in useful tools and programs, but also in numerous viruses that could affect you in different ways.
Given this situation, it is always crucial to have your computer equipped with some of the best antivirus softwares. This way, here’s a collection of such tools: Intego, Norton, McAfee, Bitdefender and BullGuard. These will protect you and prevent you from getting your information stolen, which is usually what most viruses do.
Despite the outstanding efficiency of these tools, the truth is that you could remove the virus from your computer without making use of these, which is a bold action that many people do.
If you don’t know how, here’s a little guide for you to follow.
Always Be Careful
First of all, it is worth noticing that it’s always possible to remove a virus from an infected device by yourself. Logically, this will always depend on the programming of the adware, spyware, virus or any other unwanted program. However, this is usually a really long process that could end up damaging some of your computer’s files in case some of the steps don’t work properly.
This way, it is crucial to have a complete back-up in case you are decided to take this road, given the fact that these will help you restore the computer to the previous state if you take the wrong move and everything fails.
If you don’t do this, then the following instruction would be at your risk.
Engage With The Virus
Once you took the proper measures to start this journey safely, this first thing is to know the enemy, to know which exact virus you are confronting. This is crucial since it will give you a clear idea not only of what to do, but especially of knowing which steps you shouldn’t take.
This way, the first thing to pay attention is the security message that will appear in front of you, which will show the exact name or codename of the virus. Also, it is important knowing that if the message doesn’t give you the name right away and only shows you something like “Click Here For More Info,” you must click on it if it doesn’t ask you to provide any personal data. This will reveal the virus’ name.
After this, you must use Microsoft’s program Threat Expert and get the virus’ entire data in order to start the real hunt. This one shouldn’t take too much time since you will know the exact place where the virus is hiding.
Block It
On this point, it is important to know that it will be impossible to kill this bug unless you make it sleep first, which is something you can do only after ending the numerous processes that the virus already created on your computer.
A first step is simply to block the program that the virus affected from starting along with your usual programs every time that your device is turned on. You can use the so-called “msconfig” or System Configuration to make this happen. You can get to it by simply writing it on the search box.
Once you are in it, double click on the “General” tab and then select the circle that is next to “Selective Startup.” Then click “Startup” and click on each of the programs that have a suspicious manufacturer in order to disable then. Finally, you just need to restart the device to close the latest versions of the virus that are running.
Start The Task Manager And End The Processes
After restarting the device, open the Task Manager and double click on “Processes.” Then compare the processes listed as running on the device to the list of virus-created processes that the Threat Expert report gave you. Once you do this, you must end every single process that matches the ones on the report until each of the processes that were created by the virus are gone.
Seek And Delete Each Of The Virus’ Files
After the three previous steps, the next action is to go to the exact location where the virus is and delete it for good.
On this point, it is important to take into consideration the fact that most viruses tend to hide inside the so-called “Temp” folder. Given this situation, if you were looking for something like “D:\Users\YourUserName\AppData\LocalLow\Temp\Virus…” you will have to click on each of these items from left to right until you finally get to the virus. The reason? Let’s say that if you simply click on the “Virus” item it will do nothing. You have to do this in the hard way.
After taking this long road, you just have to delete every file name that matches those that appeared on the Threat Expert report.
Remove Every Registry Key
While many would say this is it, in order to be sure you must go into the Registry and remove every single registry key that the virus put in. To make this quickly, all you have to do is to write “regedit” in the search box and click on the Regedit program from the results.
Then you just have to delete each of the registry keys created by the virus. Of course, you must be extra careful on this point since you will find a list with a lot of keys, including some that aren’t virus-created.
Change The Passwords
On this point, you can say your computer is finally free of viruses. However, far from being all over, the next step to take is to change each of your passwords. Of course, this is simply for security reasons, but taking all the proper measures is always the best approach to any computer-related issue.
Naturally, changing the passwords once you removed a virus without any anti-virus tool is also important since you don’t know if the malware managed to scrape any private data from the keystrokes. In fact, you also don’t know if the malware sold this information to a hacker or a cybercriminal that could eventually attack you.
In short, simply change each of your passwords once you manage to remove the virus from your computer, and you’re good to go.