Home > HowTo > Security > How to remove malware from Windows
How to remove malware from Windows
Introduction to malware
Prevent malware infections
Best malware removal tools
Conclusion
Sometimes it's better to re-install Windows but we all try to remove malware with some removal tools. A couple of years ago malware was similar to worms, trojans, rootkits, spyware, adware and any other type of malicious and unwanted software. I noticed that recently they included in the definition of a malware the well known computer viruses.
The real purpose of malware: to infect as many computers as possible in order to gain control over them which will finally be used for illegal activities like sending spam, child pornography, denial of service attacks, obtaining financial informations like bank accounts, PayPal accounts, eBay accounts and any other information that could be useful for those who creates the malware.
Short explanation of each type of malware :
Computer viruses : Most viruses are being created to destroy, corrupt, damage your entire computer. Some of them uses all forms of malware in order to gain as much as possible information about you and your computer but most of them, as I said will try to destroy the information on your PC.
Computer Worms : Usually those are small in size and they are created for one purpose: to spread over the Internet in order to infect other computers. Worms evolved but they usually scan computer networks and infects the vulnerable ones. If you will be the victim, the worm will use your PC to infect others.
Trojan horses : Most of the time a trojan horse is being delivered in a program, when you install an application you also install the trojan which can install any other type of malware on your computer. That's why it's called this way since it will open doors for other malware.
Rootkits : If your computer is infected with a rootkit you will not be able to see him or any other malware launched by the rootkit on your computer. It's like a parasite that is able to control your PC without knowing about it.
Backdoors : If your PC is vulnerable, it may become a good target for a malware. A backdoor is actually an open door on your PC that allows the attacked to enter or leave anytime when your computer is connected to the Internet.
Spyware : You can infect your computer with an "easy form of spyware" which actually will track your daily activity like what websites you visit, what hours do you browser etc. Those are coming included with an "User Agreement" and they are being installed with a program. Another form of spyware will try to install all other types of malware and this is more dangerous even if it's called "spyware".
KeyLoggers : Those are also knows as keystroke loggers and they have one purpose. They save all of your usernames, passwords and everything that requires a log in procedure to a website in to a file. After saving all of these confidential information they usually "e-mail" your personal details to the bad people.
Dialers : This is probably getting old as this form of malware usually infects your computer and then it would attempt to dial a phone number that would tax you at a high rate. Since the number of dial-up connection is lower and probably will dissapear in a couple of years, this form of malware will become history soon but it still affects those who uses a dial-up to connect to the Internet.
There is only one truth and I learned everything from my experience. If your computer is being infected the best thing that you can do immediately is to stop all Internet Connections and then to change all of your passwords from all accounts like your e-mail, bank account, shopping account and to re-install Windows. Next you will need to identify the infection source for your PC or how your PC got infected by malware and here are some of the common ways to infect your computer:
- You visited a crack, serial numbers website.
Solution : DO NOT visit any cracking, serial numbers web sites. It's illegal and a lot of cracks or patches are infected with malware.
- You downloaded a crack for a program.
Solution : DO NOT download any cracks. It's illegal and there's a high chance to infect your computer with malware.
- You didn't used an antivirus software.
Solution : Install an antivirus and make sure to update it daily. If you have an antivirus installed and your computer got infected you could change it.
- You don't have an firewall installed.
Solution : A firewall is essential, it will improve your security for some types of malware but it cannot protect you against others, however you need to start using a firewall.
- You simply visited a website when browsing on the Internet.
Solution : This is a smart method for bad people to infect innocent users. Supposing that you're interested about cars or flowers and the website that you're visiting will try to infect your computer, if you don't use an antivirus, firewall or anti-malware program you can be an easy target.
- You downloaded a file from a torrent tracker and then you install it.
Solution : Torrents were created with good intentions but they are being used to spread any type of malware. For example, popular programs are being modified. When you download a program from a torrent and you attempt to install it, it will install the program and also an additional trojan or any other type of malware. Avoid downloading files from torrent. I infected my computer with a form of "Virut" and my antivirus said was clean when I scanned the file ( it was up to date ) so I would highly recommend you to avoid downloading programs from torrents.
- You don't use an anti-malware program.
Solution : Even if you do have an antivirus and a firewall, some antiviruses does not recognize or do not have an advanced detection system for malware files so it's always good to have an additional anti-malware program.
- Someone sent you a file over the Internet and you save it on your computer.
Solution : Do not receive files over the Internet via chat programs or any other form of communications. Supposing that you receive a file from a friend, his computer could be already infected and it could infect your computer too.
- Someone gave you an website address and you visit it.
Solution : Again, it's good to inform yourself about an website before visiting that website. Do a small research on Google or on your favourite search engine. An established website with a good reputation should be clean but you can additionaly perform a website check for security problems with Norton Safeweb and McAfee Site Advisor.
- You received a security message from your bank.
Solution : If your bank contacted you via e-mail, asking you to enter confidential information then it's 100 % a fraud, phishing attempt. Your bank will never contact you via e-mail and then to ask you for your personal information. Remember that they have all of your information already. Even if the message says that they need to update their database or that they lost their database, remember, it's always a SCAM.
- You received a security message from your shopping website.
Solution : eBay, Amazon, Shopping or any other shopping website sent you an email that asks you to log in and enter your username and password ? It looks like a legitimate email but it isn't, It's only a fraud attempt. Such financial institutions will never ask you over e-mail for such personal informations. You should never give away such informations over e-mail.
- You won something and you have followed the link from your e-mail.
Solution : Scammers, people that creates malware are trying to get your attention. If you received an email that said "You are the winner", then it's another fraud attempt. Always be suspicious and avoid to enter any financial or personal information on such websites.
- You didn't visited any website, any torrent, you didn't accessed anything but still your PC got infected.
Solution : This is something special, you know about malware and all the risks and you do use an antivirus, firewall, anti-malware program and you know all of these tips than I'm afraid that it's a more complex issue. Your Windows or one of the programs installed on your computer has a vulnerability that allows malware to exploit your computer and to gain complete access. This is the most dangerous thing since you are not able to identify the cause of infection. Make sure that you a Windows version that is being supported by Microsoft and that allows you to download security updates. Also make sure to update all of your programs since some of them could make your system vulnerable. Re-install your system with other Windows version ( recommended a newer one ) and try to use the latest version of your favourite programs.
I am sure that listing here some malware removal tools it's not something new but I guess that you would be curious to find out what programs do I use when I want to remove malware. In my opinion some of them are better than others and most of them are useless in some cases if you don't update them before each scan and this is quite simple when a new type of malware is being released if you don't update your removal tool it won't detect it. Here is the list with the best malware removal tools :
SpyBot Search and Destroy
This is my favourite malware removal tool and I will tell you why. SpyBot Search and Destroy comes with several features like the botnet scanner and hosts-file modification ( prevents malware to update themselves by connecting to bad websites from where they can become harder to detect - this is my favourite feature ). There are many other features but I am not going to list all features here. I forgot to mention one of the most important things - it is absolutely free and it works on all Windows versions starting with Windows 95 and all major browsers. If you will read articles on the Internet about SpyBot Search and Destroy that says something like that : "SpyBot Search and Destroy was good in the past but now there are other programs much better than this one" just ignore them. There are probably writen by people that are jealous on his success and on his high detection rates. I suspect that such articles are writen by people with similar programs or even by those who are creating malware.
Ad-Aware
For many years, Ad-Aware was appreciated by a lot of people having millions of downloads. Now you can choose Ad-Aware Free, the free version which will detect, remove and clean all kind of malware. It offers an integrated real-time protection system, a rootkit removal system and many other great features. It's hard for me to talk about Ad-Aware Free since it has been probably the most used anti-malware software in the world. In the last years they promoted three versions: Ad-Aware Free, Ad-Aware Plus and Ad-Aware Pro. Even if the free version doesn't have all the features available in Plus and Pro versions it will remain one of the most powerful and trusted anti-malware tools.
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
This is a more recently anti-malware tool that has become extremely appreciated all around the world. It supports Windows 2000, XP, Vista and 7, it is fast when scanning your PC, it can even scan all of your drives, has a cool feature called "FileAssasin" that will allow you to delete the files locked by Windows and also many other features. The main difference between the free and shareware version is the real-time monitoring and automatically updates for the shareware one. But if you don't need an active scanning, using the free version of Malwarebytes Anti-Malware would have the same detections rates like the shareware one since both of them are using the same database.
HijackThis
Another completely free anti-malware removal tool for Windows. This application is the latest from our list since it's not like the other anti-malware tools. It is being used by advanced and expert users but it can be useful enough even for a beginner if it's going to ask an expert. Please be careful since you can destroy you system configuration if you don't know how to use HijackThis. Do not modify any system settings unless you really know what you're doing. For example, this tool will scan your entire system and it will generate a log file for you if you allow this application to generate the log. You can't see the differences unless you're an computer expert but you can send this log file to their website called "HijackThis log file analysis" just copy and paste the logfile in the indicated textbox or simply upload the log file from your computer at this address.
Those are the best anti-malware removal tools for Windows but there are a couple of others that worth to be mentioned here :
WinPatrol
squared Free
AVG Anti-Spyware
CWShredder
Rootkit Revealer
Spyware Terminator
SpywareBlaster
SuperAntiSpyware
Windows Defender
...probably other useful tools exists but we think that those are the best and they are extremely popular. We apologize if we forgot to mention other tools that worth to be mentioned in this article...
During this article I tried to give you some simple definitions for each type of malware. I also tried to explain you that is always better to prevent malware infections and finally if your computer has been infected with unknown type of malware I have listed the best malware removal tools that once installed and updated it will identify all known forms of malware. This is why I hate to clasify computer viruses as malware since most of the anti-malware programs will not be able to detect a smart virus and vice versa an antivirus could not detect some forms of malware like spyware. As a final conclusion keep in mind that security of your computer is more then a simple play with some nice programs that scans your computer and shows you some red and green bars. It is real like in the real life. Once that your credit card, bank account, e-mail password, all other accounts on different shopping, social websites are "collected" from your infected PC it will be used in an illegal way. If now you're thinking at how to remove malware from Windows it would be good if everything ends well for you to think in the future at how to prevent malware infections and it would be useful to know what are the best malware removal tools in case that you will need them one more time. If you're thinking if I was a victim of a malware infections then you know the answer : Yes ! I was infected several times but I was lucky enough and I did what I said in this article. You may leave a comment here.