Today’s computer viruses are no longer what they once were: the new viruses are more subtle and intelligent, perhaps asking for ransom to free personal files or installing silent programs that steal data or mine Bitcoin.I virus e i malware in recent years, in fact, they are not created to destroy but to earn, through blackmail or by exploiting the processing power of the victims’ PC to perform various types of operations.
If we fear that our PC has fallen victim to new viruses, let’s not panic: with a few simple programs it is possible to remove the vast majority of next-generation malware, without the need to contact a computer technician and without necessarily having to format the computer and lose all the data saved on the PC.
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Tipi on the virus
In general i less easy to detect malware are those that go to capture the user’s personal data for advertising purposes, in order to send them emails, banners or commercial proposals based on the sites visited. In severe cases it is malware that intend to steal passwords and login information, for example, to a bank account, eBay, Facebook or PayPal, which leverage people’s paranoia to blackmail and take money.
Viruses that blackmail instead they are represented by naively downloaded programs thinking they are doing well which instead turn out to be terrible viruses that put the user in front of an ultimatum: either you buy the program or your computer won’t work anymore. There are also i fake antivirus, the fake programs that solve computer problems and others I talked about in the article about programs not to be installed on the PC for any reason in the world.
In some cases the virus, disguised under the name of a program that seems normal, can prevent the task manager from starting, no longer starts the PC in safe mode and does not allow you to install anti-malware programs and real antivirus.
It is worthwhile then be familiar with the differences between the various types of viruses, so as to understand what trojans, ransomware and worms mean and how to fight them.
Remove malware from your PC: simple procedure
If you find that you have downloaded a virus program or if you recognize one of the signals from a heavily infected computer, let’s not waste any more time and follow the procedure for remove any malware quickly, even if the antivirus was ineffective or impossible to start. To make a scheme on how to remove a malware manually that is understandable and simple for everyone, we list the steps to take on the Windows PC so that you can rest assured.
- Reboot your PC in safe mode: in Windows Safe Mode viruses do less damage and cannot boot properly. It is therefore advisable to start cleaning by bringing the operating system to this mode.
- Scan with Malwarebytes: The best program we can use for viruses of all kinds is Malwarebytes, a benchmark for safe malware removal for years.
- Restart computer: after scanning and cleaning with Malwarebytes we restart the PC and enter normal mode. If there are no other symptoms of the infection we continue with the last point, otherwise we follow the advanced procedure (for professionals).
- Clean the system of unnecessary filesSome viruses leave traces or changes on the system that must be removed to avoid future infections or problems. The best cleaning program for an infected PC is AdwCleaner, a cleaning tool to run to make the system truly safe.
After cleaning the system we enhance Windows Defender to make it very safe or install a new free and powerful antivirus like Kaspersky O Bitdefender.
Remove malware from your PC: advanced procedure
If the PC is still locked or no security tool can be started due to the infection, we must use even more powerful tools to be able to clean the computer and make it operational again. The advanced procedure is available below:
- Start your PC in safe mode: it is important to work temporarily to avoid worse damage. Before the virus blocks this mode, it is worthwhile start safe mode right away Before it’s too late.
- Scaricare Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool: this free tool from Kaspersky analyzes your PC in depth looking for any threats, removing them effectively and quickly. It can be downloaded from the official website.
- Use Kaspersky Anti-Ransomware Tool: another effective tool for removing the most serious threats such as ransomware e cripto-malware, the most dangerous PC viruses. It too can be downloaded from the dedicated site.
- Use Hitman Pro: the last tool to be launched to remove all traces of viruses and malware. Equipped with a very powerful and effective cleaning engine but it is offered free for only 30 days, so it is worthwhile to launch it only if all the previous tools have failed to eliminate the infection.
After attempting the advanced cleaning we try to restart the PC and see if any symptoms of the infection still appear and if the ransomware block is gone.
If the PC does not start what to do?
If the PC does not even start in safe mode and there is no way to start the system, the only hope to recover the full operation of the computer is to use the Emergency Scan CD, i.e. optical media to boot on the internal DVD player or a external DVD player. The best emergency disks are:
- Kaspersky Free Rescue Disk
- Comodo Rescue Disk
- ESET SysRescue
- Avira Rescue System
- Trend Micro Rescue Disk
Let’s get a blank CD or DVD, let’s go to another perfectly functional PC and burn one of the disc images above, using some burning programs; alternatively we can create the emergency disk even with a USB stick.
Once the disk or key has been prepared, connect them to the infected PC, let’s change the boot order and make sure to select the optical disc or USB stick. If we have done everything correctly, the tool’s recovery environment will start and we can immediately start a scan for malware to remove.
At the end of the scan, we restart the computer to see if it starts regularly and if it no longer shows signs of infection; it may be a good idea to take advantage of it to launch the tools seen in the previous chapters, so as to remove any residues of the infection.
Conclusions
After removing the malware, if we notice that Windows is behaving strangely, some items or menus are missing or some programs or apps cannot be accessed, we recommend that you reset Windows and return to initial settings, taking care to save the personal data on the PC and to use the cloud recovery procedure to immediately download the latest version of Windows during the process.
In another article we also saw how remove viruses that take your pc hostage, those decidedly more difficult to remove since we will also have to decrypt the encrypted files.
For the more experienced it is also possible clean up your pc by removing viruses by hand and, after removing any threats, we always can strengthen PC security by blocking access to sites with viruses and malware.