I have found that, most of the time, my clients will wait till their PC is so out of sync with the world, that reformatting is often easier than trying to remove the computer virus that got them there in the first place. Now, every once in a while we get lucky. You may have a client who has enough common sense and foresight to get the computer right into you at the first sign of trouble. While this is a rare occurrence these days, it is a nice change of pace, nevertheless.

Recently I had a new client bring me their notebook computer with the explanation that it appeared to be infected with something. Everything ran fine on it, yet as soon as they would connect to the Internet - things got reaaally sloooow. On a hunch, I went to the command line and ran NETSTAT. Sure enough, it was sending out packets to every domain with the word Microsoft imaginable.

So I went to check their anti-virus definitions and sure enough they were WAY outdated. Now since getting onto the Internet was simply not an option at this moment because of the bandwidth saturation taking place thanks to the virus, I needed to filter out that bad traffic. So I grabbed my handy-dandy copy of Zone Alarm free edition and begin the installation process. After it was completed, I turned it on and allowed it to work its magic. Even though the virus was still on the PC, I was able to quickly update the anti-virus software with little effort.

Now before I began my the process of virus removal, I made sure to disable the system restore feature. The reason for this was because there were a number of nasties that liked to make a home there and avoid the virus scan process. Once that was done and the virus scan was successful, I then ran a second scan online with the HouseCall Antivirus program that runs from Active X (I believe).

So you have established that the PC is now virus free. At this point I like to make a quick run down on any potential spyware threats with a combination of Ad-aware and Spybot S&D. Then download Firefox and offer that as an alternative browser as well. My final task is to do a quick install of all of the updates that need to be added for the OS as well as their commonly used software. All that is left is to whip up a clear written summary of what is done and call the client to pick up their PC.

Now granted, a large portion of the time you will need to take much more drastic measure to remove some of the more stubborn viruses out there. Removal tools, running from safe mode, these are all realities as well, But it is nice to have those occasional jobs that can run this smoothly, isn’t it?

For those of you unfamiliar with using virus removal tools, I will be covering this in Thursday’s newsletter, so be sure to stay tuned. :o)