How to remove Virus files and trojans
Just posted this on Yahoo answers and thought it may help some others.
Its in response to a question about a downloader trojan and how to get rid of it.
Hi,
Some more info on the trojan might narrow down the specific trojan.
How do you know you have it in the first place?
Also if you are using Norton and it came with your pc then these installations often only worked for about 3 months as a trial you have to pay to activate and download the latest files to detect the the latest viruses and trojans. Yours may be out of date. If it is upto date but detecting and not cleaning the trojan, have you looked it up on Nortons website for further info?
In the meantime there are a number of things you can do.
first got here.
http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
And download the latest stinger file from McAfee to your desktop and run it just click on scan and let it run to search for the latest 55 trojans and viruses, this may do it.
If its and older one or stil doesnt clean it then try here.
http://www.pcpitstop.com/
Make sure you use Internet Explorer as the virus scan uses Active X
Click on antivirus from the left hand menu and then PC Pitstop Virus Scan from the page that displays just follow the prompts and allow the activex control to load. It will do a full scan of your pc.
Next got here,
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
Select download from the left menu,
Scroll down and click on the big blue button that says download again Spybot Search and destroy,
Select a download location from the list that displays, i.e BNFileforum and click on download link on the right.
Save to your desktop and install, first thing is to search for updates, select them all and download then scan your whole machine, you may need to close and then re-open so the latest signiture file downloaded are used. The program will check as of today over 38000 spyware/trojans etc as can be see at the botton of the program window while scanning.
There is plenty of info on using and installing this program on the internet so search for it if your not sure how.
These 3 things shoulod find and clean of your pc nearly everything. Some trojans though need a bit more individual treatment like one a friend had this wek call spyfalcon, very difficult to remove but the instructions here diod the trick.
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic43659.html
After all this make sure you stay as free as possible from crap getting on your machine.
If using XP turn the firewall ON, this can be found under Start-Settings and control panel.
If not using XP then try Zonealarm free version at least as it blocks incoming and outgoing traffic which the XP one does not.
Use a decent Antivirus, i use AVG free version from www.grisoft.com as it uses less resources then Norton or McAfee and quite frankly have never had a problem with it.
Next if you have broadband use a good NAT router properly configured and setup so that your PC is in full stealth mode on the internet, the free USB ones you get from most broadband providers just done do the trick, if you have wireless then make sure you have proper security keys and encryption setup otherwise anyone wandering past will be using you connection.
This website.
http://www.grc.com has great advise for cheking your connection. Click on Shields UP and then scroll down the page to the Hot Spots section and click on Shields UP again and follow the instructions.
The page below has info on routers.
http://www.grc.com/nat/nats.htm
Make sure all your passwords are at least 8 charactors long, one capital letter and one number and if possible contain mispellings. That way they will be a lot harder to crack.
Remember a few trojans take snapshots of what is displayed on screen so bank websites that use pictures of numbers and similar tools for you to select may still be vulnerable.
Lastly use Firefox, you will be less prone to what are know as Drive By trojan installs that install from just visiting a website or displaying a picture when using Internet Explorer.
Latest trojan installs from a flaw in MS Word 2003, so dont open any links to word docs friends might send you.
plenty of info here.
http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?date=2006-05-18
Hope this all helps.
Regards
Rob
LInks
http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger/
http://www.pcpitstop.com/
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/topic43659.html
http://www.grc.com
http://www.grc.com/nat/nats.htm
http://isc.sans.org/diary.
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