Corfy's Corner My little corner of the web.

A friend recently contacted me about the fact that she had a virus on her computer and asked for advice in helping get rid of it. I figured the advice would apply to more people than just her, so I thought I would pass this along.

BTW, this really only applies to Microsoft Windows computers. People who are running Apple Mac OSX or some variation of Linux are largely immune to viruses (although both platforms do have some, but the number for Windows can be measured in millions, while the number for OSX and Linux can be measured in hundreds, or maybe dozens).

One tool that should already be on your computer is called Malicious Software Removal Tool, which is provided by Microsoft. Click on Start, select "Run", and in the box that pops up, type "mrt" (without the quotes... don't ask why it doesn't have an "s" in the command) and hit "OK". You will want to do a full scan. It isn't the greatest tool in the world, and it only looks for a small number of infections, but it is available for free from Microsoft. And it might get some of the worst cleaned off before you move on to the real tools. If it says that mrt can't be found, well, that means you have some Windows updates that need to be downloaded and installed.

The best free tool I know of to remove viruses and other bad software from a computer is called Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. It can be downloaded for free from http://www.malwarebytes.org. If you know or suspect you are infected, you will want to do a full scan rather than a quick scan, but a quick scan is fine if you are just checking your computer.

Unfortunately, some viruses know about this program and are actually able to stop it from running, which is a dirty trick and hard to compensate for. But if it runs, it does an excellent job of finding stuff and cleaning the computer.

Two other programs you can try are Spybot: Search and Destroy (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html) and Ad-Aware (http://www.lavasoft.com/single/mirror_download.php?f=g2Obc772A). Spybot was one of my favorite programs to use, but it hasn't done as good of a job of keeping up with the latest threats as I would have liked, but it is still decent at getting a computer cleaned up. Ad-Aware was another program I liked, but it has gotten so bloated and slow that I don't use it anymore, but I still use it.

Malwarebytes, Spybot and Ad-Aware do good job of cleaning a computer, but they only scan when you tell them to, they don't constantly watch for incoming viruses. My favorite free anti-virus program to run in the background is Comodo, which can be found at http://www.comodointernetsecurity.com. They have a paid version, but I have never used it. Their free version has all of the features most people need.

If you don't want to use Comodo for some reason, other free anti-virus programs are AVG (http://free.avg.com) and Avast! (http://avast.com). AVG is pretty good and was my favorite for a long time, but it is getting pretty annoying about asking you to purchase a higher priced version. It is one thing to be asked every now and then, it is another to be reminded every time you start the program. I have heard good things about Avast!, but I have never used it myself.

One thing I should point out is that, if you are infected, this will take time. Each of these programs will need to scan the computer, with a scan taking anywhere from 20 minutes to two hours, depending on the speed of the computer and how much data is on the computer's harddrive.

This is just the emergency “I need to clean my computer now” instructions. I didn't even get into th e regular maintenance that needs to happen to keep your Windows computer running as smoothly as possible, like keeping up with Windows updates, doing regular scans, defragging your harddrive, etc.

If this seems like a lot of work to go through to keep your Windows computer running as smoothly as possible, I agree. You'd think the most popular operating system in the world would be easier to use. And it is stuff like this that make me wonder why Windows is the most popular operating system in the world, but I guess that is a topic for a different discussion.