Cleaning computers

[trakers]

As you may know, I am not in favor of "cleaning" computers as a general rule. Once infected a computer can never be trusted again. That is Security 101.

That said, there are times family and friends absolutely refuse to allow me to blast away their stuff and thus I will attempt a cleanup with the caveat that their may still be some bad stuff lurking about their machines.

So the question is, besides the effective mainstream programs* everyone knows about, are there any other gems you guys use to help "clean up" infected computers?

* Norton, SpyBot, AdAware, MalWareBytes, MSE, CCleaner, and HiJackThis

 

[J Hill Designs]

Eset

 

[joeshaul]

One of the things that helps immensely is a "PE disk", or Preinstalled environment, also sometimes known as a "live cd". It's basically a bootable operating system with installed apps. As long as the network card drivers aren't too vague, most installs will already have them, then it's just a matter of having the properly licensed scanner of your choice and letting it update via the net. I believe there are some prebuilt versions out there with shareware/freeware versions of some of the more popular scanners that you can just burn or pop on a thumb drive and go.

You can't really trust running a virii scanner on an already infected machine, as the likelihood of it removing the infection without causing it to reinfect, hide itself, or just flat out not be removed due to being integrated into things like explorer.exe is slim. The infections along with people's excessive crap will usually cause it to crawl along as well, so long as the computer has enough RAM, a PE should be quicker.

 

[signgal]

last time my guy cleaned out my kids' computer, he used ComboFix, VundoFix, VirtumundoBeGone, SmitfraudFix, STOPzilla, Norman_Malware_Cleaner and mbam

maybe overkill or he was just running the gambit to be sure but he gets good results *shrugs*

 

[trakers]

The more the merrier really. I find each one will find items the others didn't.

 

[Bill Modzel]

Lat time I cleaned my MacPro I just popped off the side panel and put the little sucker wand on the vacuum cleaner. It does a pretty good job but you should use in in conjunction with a soft brush on the circuit boards.

 

[Si Allen]

Hey Bill....why not just take off the side panels and put it in the dishwasher?


:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:

 

[Replicator]

If the computer is running XP, then the best and ONLY thing I trust to fully abolish ALL infected system files is : COMBOFIX.

Really hoping somebody puts together a program like this for Windows 7 . . . !

 

[Bill Modzel]

No viruses Si, it doesn't need sterilization like those other ones.

 

[Techman]

sorry my friend, but the days of virus deflection on a mac is just about over.

quote..
"Contrary to popular belief, the Macintosh operating system has not always been a safe haven from malicious code," said the 96-page report, entitled the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, obtained by The Mac Observer. "It is now clear that the Mac OS is increasingly becoming a target for the malicious activity that is more commonly associated with Microsoft and various Unix-based operating systems. Symantec believes that as the popularity of Apple's new platform continues to grow, so too will the number of attacks directed at it."

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/Symantec_Mac_Virus_Hacker_Attacks_on_the_Rise/

 

[Techman]

Oh,,

Once infected a computer can never be trusted again.

This is simply not proven by the facts.

First.
Computers are not infected by some unholy life threatening life form.
The problem is just code. It is just performing the code directions. Simple one's and zero's put together into some sequence to cause us mayhem . Remove just one of those bits and the problem is gone forever. The challenge is making sure the root code is gone. Any good technician can make sure its all gone. All he has to do is run the proper tool and all will be fine.

In fact I do this "cleaning" all the time and never had a machine come back because some maggot ware restarted. Not one. Once that maggot code is changed by just one bit and the machine will simply over write that space with something else.

I never advocate a complete reformat and reinstall. In fact I just worked on one of our board users' machine and got it running in just a few minutes after another "tech" said it had to be all redone. I am certainly no super tech either. I am just a guy that works on computers on the side to make some grocery money.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

Lat time I cleaned my MacPro I just popped off the side panel and put the little sucker wand on the vacuum cleaner. It does a pretty good job but you should use in in conjunction with a soft brush on the circuit boards.

Bill, Do you have any idea how much static is created by a vacuum cleaner? Static is not your computer's friend.