windows 7 spyware?
Community Forums/General Help/windows 7 spyware?
| ||
| I think I may have picked up some malware/spyware and am wondering what are the best free apps today for finding/removing these things? Thanks. |
| ||
| The best solution imo is to have made regular backups of your essential files so that you can restore the os to a previous state and then restore your files... Else you can try to remove the viruses/malwares with for example Microsoft security essentials or Windows defender or Microsoft malicious software removal tool or Malwarebytes anti malwares or another, but even if an anti viruses/malwares tool can help you to remove it, it may have altered some of your files... Also check which services/programs automatically start when windows boots, (msconfig) |
| ||
| I tried system restore but it said it only had one restore point from yesterday so that wasn't much use. I installed Malwarebytes free and it found one PUP (potential unwanted program) which was Dell System Detect. I looked it up and found it can be exploited so uninstalled it. I ran msconfig and nothing other than Intel, etc software was there. Over a week ago, I noticed when the pc crashed an odd error message seeming to report some file that had a sort of malware-type name, maybe it was just adware. Then yesterday, I noticed a small square window popup just as I launched Firefox which seemed suspicious. Maybe I'm just getting paranoid, Windows tends to do that to me... too many hacker articles perhaps. |
| ||
| You can only limit the risks, you can never be 100% protected, who knows what a program or the os does when it updates or when it reports a bug... |
| ||
| I wouldn't bother trying to delete that spyware: Format C: Clean reboot and some prayers. Reinstall. |
   |