Looking at the basics posting and thinking to myself, man, that's not even close anymore.

First of all, I highly recommend that you be prepared to / actually do wipe your machine out and start from scratch.

I get a lot, and I mean a lot of questions related to basics of computer troubleshooting. The problem I am finding is that almost 100% of people want a push button solution. Said another way, nearly 0% want to put forth any thought, effort, etc. or want to pay for someone to care about their solution.
So, here we go again, in a much more basic form. You may Google the howtos if you can't figure out how these work.

I used to say restart then ask. This is now wrong. Much like doctors we are flip-floppers on what works best at this moment. Some viruses and malware really harden themselves in the registry (and other places) when you restart after they install behind the scenes. If you suspect you are infected, clear cache, and virus scan before a reboot. Some viruses corrupt your virus scanners, some viruses lock the machine and all you can do it reboot. Not going to cover every aspect of what my crazy brain thinks every time I sit at a computer. Just keep it in mind...

Use Common Sense.

Keep your dang virus program up to date. Can't afford it? Get a free one. Do something:
AVG free
Avast free
Other free ones

Make them scan on a scheduled basis if they don't already.

Ok, enough rant format, let's educate:

Spybot on a regular basis. Run the updates. Figure out how to make it update AND scan on a regular basis. Once a week on Wednesday at 12:00am works great for me.

I have fallen in love with Advanced System care. The (now paid) version does many of the things I used to do in the registry for people to speed things up. The advantage to the way this program is laid out is that it makes it as easy as push button, or as complicated as you want to drill down.
Say what you will, I think they did a great job.

The makers of Advanced System Care, Iobit also make a great defrag program. I will talk about this later.

Ccleaner, which is short for Crap Cleaner, is a great utility to cover your tracks. It removes many of the traces that your normal cookie / cache / history removal does not remove. If you do not know that the index.dat file is on your computer, you should Google it some time when you get a free moment.

Beware of the toolbars, if you don't want them, don't let the programs, or any install them. Pay attention to this on all of these apps.


If you are brave, and you just can't get the virus removed, and you don't want to reformat, you might try Multi-AV and Combofix. You will need to read up on them and run them at your own risk. Again, Google it.