What's the best spyware removal type program these days?

[Kelemvor]

I haven't had to worry about spyare and such for a few years now. Back in the day, Spybot and Adaware were the best and used together, would remove just about everything.

Just wondering what's good these days as a friend just asked since she's got a lot of pop ups going on and things like that.

Any sites done any comparisons or anyone have their personal favorites?

As of now I want to focus just on the removing existing infections and not about protecting from future ones...

Thanks.

 

[Rottie]

PC Magazine voted WebRoot the best spyware remover but it is not free. I have used Spybot and adware in the past but CCleaner cleans spywares and everything

 

[LuDaCriS66]

malwarebytes anti-malware

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Windows Defender

 

[MustISO]

I use A-Squared Free and AVG Anti-spyware. Never had an infection (that I know of) so I don't know how well they work. Having a locked down OS and Firefox with add-ons seems to work pretty good.

 

[mechBgon]

Superantispyware plus a free 30-day trial of Kaspersky Antivirus 7 would be a good combo for cleanup. Make sure she doesn't run Kaspersky on top of her existing antivirus software, the old antivirus should be uninstalled before the new one is installed. When she installs Kaspersky, she should right-click the red "K" icon in her system tray, choose Configure, and enable the checkbox for "Potentially dangerous software", sort of like this pic :camera:.

Beyond that, the flip side of removal is keeping it removed, so... security tips.

 

[xgsound]

Start by getting xpwinsockfix at http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4372.html in case malware removal breaks the internet connection.

Adaware and Search and destroy have trouble keeping up with the newer nasty stuff. After a complete A/V scan in safe mode I use Superantispyware in safe mode from http://www.superantispyware.co...ispywarefreevspro.html and Malwarebytes (normal mode only) from http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php to start with. If you find Vundo or smitfraud look for more focused fixes at http://wiki.castlecops.com/Mal...d_Prevention:_Overview


Jim

 

[cubby1223]

http://www.bleepingcomputer.co...ix/how-to-use-combofix

Finds and removes a lot of crap that other programs miss. I haven't found an all-inclusive software that covers everything yet - it always comes down to using utilities that present you a listing of files that are suspect and you choose if they are good or not.

The newest problem I've seen is something that puts itself into a directory under c:\documents and settings\user\application data\, and one of the things it does is change the desktop wallpaper. Norton, AVG, Kaspersky, ad-aware, windows defender, hijackthis, etc. find nothing. The only program that alerted me to the files was the combo fix log of all recently created directories.

 

[law9933]

As they said, my copy/paste

Just to mention other great programs, all free & there are more>
a-squared
Spybot
AdAware
CCleaner (has a reg cleaner with backup) or ATF
Auslogics defrag
Spyware Blaster (blocker)
Everast Home (system info)
Silent Runners (info)

 

[Pretty Cool]

Hate to generalize because there are always programs that I have not tried yet, but none of them seem to be 100% effective or even close. If a system is infected, it is usually multiple malware so you can actually see the rogue files in file manager. Yet, after running numerous programs, they are still there. So if you were to ask me, I would say the most effective tool is searching by date & deleting everything that was written to your HD during that period. Unfortunately there is no date associated with registry entries or rootkits, so you still have to find them with other tools. Using malware tools might work if the infection is not noticable. However once the malware becomes obvious, these tools are not effective enough.

 

[QueBert]

Pretty Cool makes a good point, but unless the computer has an ungodly infestation, running a few programs can clean the majority. I fix PC's for a living, Spyware & Viruses make up 95% of my calls. A lot of the people have tons of Spyware, but typically there's only 1 really over the top one that screws the system up. The rest they would have never noticed because they don't do anything to change how the system works. A few weeks ago I had one that had some weird shit on it, it changed all the file assosiations and I couldn't even run a program or msconfig or open a cmd box, nothing. Not being a person who gives up, I figured it out and fixed it, it might not still be 100% fixed but I did what I could

another program I recommend is Cleanup! it was written to delete temp files and free up space, but I see a lot of spyware/viruses chilling with the temp files. It's also a good program because it deletes un-needed files and can free up gigs of space.