How to Help a Friend Clean up a Virus Infection

Have you already had a friend call you for help cleaning up a virus infection? All the precautions that you apply to diligently maintain the security of your computers are suddenly useless when it comes to dealing with someone else's infected computer.

The web has some great resources available for such emergencies. I'm not trying to add another one here, but rather to just collect a few links that have helped me in this situation:

First things first!

Disconnect the computer from the Internet immediately and don't reconnect it until you're reasonably sure that it's clean again! Do not try to work through these links and procedures using the infected computer. You need a second, clean computer to read instructions and download software. To transfer downloaded software to the infected computer use either a memory stick with a read-only switch (to avoid getting the infection onto the stick) or burn a CD.

Cleaning a Pest-Infested Computer — http://rgharper.mvps.org/cleanit.htm

A little dated, but still great advice and links.

Dealing with an infected PC, by Charlie Russel — http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/security/expert/russel_infectedpc.mspx

Also a little dated, but with useful Windows XP-specific information on such technical items as disabling System Restore (to keep Windows from restoring the infection after you've painstakenly cleaned it...) and running in Safe Mode.

Spybot - Search & Destroy — http://www.safer-networking.org/dl

Detects and cleans up a large number of malware. Download from http://spybot-download.net/.

AVG Free Advisor — http://free.grisoft.com/

Advice and the freely downloadable AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition scanner.

avast! antivirus software — http://www.avast.com/

Freely downloadable anti-virus scanner; also, avast! Virus Cleaner Free http://www.avast.com/eng/down_cleaner.html.

Ad-Aware malware scanner — http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Freely downloadable malware scanner.

Trend Micro HouseCall — http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Provides a free on-line virus scanner. It requires either Java or Internet Explorer with activated ActiveX technology.

Final Remark

If you use free services from any of the companies mentioned above, then consider also signing up for their paid services — if they provided value to you, you should probably give something back...