Fighting Viruses and Spyware
Mohd Ali tuned in today for the live calls, and just so happened to catch me discussing anti-virus / anti-spyware software:
Hello Chris. Since the topic inside the chat was about anti-virus, I would like to share some things with you that you might be interested in. I think that anti-virus these days is essentially useless. In the “old days”, they used to repair floppies and take care of viruses. However, now they slow down the entire system, and show flashy graphics. As you said, you can avoid 99% of viruses and spyware if you are more careful as to what websites you surf, and what you download. But in case you DO get infected by a malware, here’s a rather simple way to remove it.
You will only need one program. Unlocker assistant, it is located here: ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/ – easy! What this program allows you to do is that it frees the binary resources being used up by a process. Since viruses are always running inside the background as a separate process, you need this application in order to get rid of it.
Once you have the program installed, check the run key inside your registry. Both inside the LOCAL_MACHINE and LOCAL_USER parent keys. The viruses add themselves inside those keys in order to start upon booting. So simply locate the key the virus has added. You can google the executable names to separate the malicious start up programs from legitimate ones. The key actually gives you the path to the malicious binary.
Simply unlock the binary by right clicking it, and clicking unlock from the context menu. Then you can delete the virus. Then simply delete the registry keys the virus has added. This only takes a few minutes, but it at least allows you to keep your computer running without anti-viruses eating up hundreds upon hundreds megabytes of RAM.
I’m not sure Mohd has nailed the terminology or nuances of these digital nasties, but his tool discovery seems like it could come in handy for those of you who find yourselves fighting desktop crap on a regular basis. You’re going to need several tools to keep you clean from spyware, etc. Best one, according to geeks in the trenches, is SuperAntiSpyware.
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12 Comments
tazem81
February 18th, 2008
at 9:58pm
goodness that is too much work to check for viruses. Id rather pay for a/ get a free copy of anti ware to fix the problem.
cjsand
February 18th, 2008
at 10:36pm
finally a useful solution to viruses
Vinnie
February 18th, 2008
at 11:53pm
Well i use spyware blaster and avast anti virus but the unlocker is cool.
EXel
February 19th, 2008
at 5:20am
I’m still going to recommend Kaspersky Internet Security. Doesn’t eat too much and helps stop the attacks.
Ethan
February 19th, 2008
at 2:35pm
I agree so so so much, i have re installed windows whiped it clean and decided i do not need anti virus, if im not downloading or going to unsecure places and doing wrong things and being smart, then my chances are not likley, and if i do need to download something or go some where shady, i used linux on my comp, who is gunna use a .exe virus on my linux partition?
Joe
February 19th, 2008
at 6:56pm
Man, we sure are lucky that boot sector viruses don’t exist anymore. Wait, they do? I’d like to see you clean one of those out using regedit haha.
VesperDEM
February 20th, 2008
at 7:45am
Hmm, I guess either my post was too long or just not to Chris’ liking. I’m sorry to see that. I understand that my views were a little radical, but they really worked for me.
I did indeed run AV software in the past. Norton was my AV software of choice back then, but it just kept getting fatter and fatter to the point that it was slowing down my XP system so bad that I just couldn’t justify using it anymore.
Using web based scanners really are not that hard to use and actually are quite convenient. All I had to do was have a reminder program of some kind that would remind me to go to the web scanner every so often.
Ah well, sorry Chris for being so wordy or what ever I did to have the post be moderated out.
mike
February 20th, 2008
at 4:30pm
Or,just stop surfing pron.
don’t run as administrator, don’t open email attachments! that you don’t know who it came from,and,do Not! click links in emails! they also can have spyware or even viruses.!
cheers.!
Tony G
February 20th, 2008
at 6:28pm
Good stuff if you happen to talk “geek” and understand just where to go in the registry and how to check each entry, etc. Isn’t the first sentence when doing anything to one’s registry…”first, back up everything.”
Paying a few bucks for good anti-virus, anti-spyware and something like WinPatrol to monitor changes is so much easier for most of who use our computers every day but don’t take them apart and massage them.
Hussain
February 21st, 2008
at 3:56am
I say that anti-virus programs should be free and the only free ones that are out there are very rubbish in my opinion it is really stupid that you have to pay to get the full package.
Laaabaseball
February 22nd, 2008
at 8:57pm
I have reached the point that I now run no anti-virus, no anti-spam, no anything on my XP and Vista machines. I used to have Mcaffee (dear Jesus, I know), but I eventually learned to use AVG, because it was free and fast. Well, now I have absolutely no need for any amount of bog on my system. I don’t p2p or visit “those” kind of sites. Since my switch, I have not had any problems on any of my machines.
Robin
March 29th, 2009
at 9:03am
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