Problems with Adware/Trojans/Viruses

Kris

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My girlfriend has managed to leave her laptop in quite a state with adware, trojans and viruses for me to fix and I was wondering if anyone can recommend some of the better scanners out there to sort it out.

Main problem is adware. One or two trojans possibly (Trojan.Zlob was the one scanners were picking up but have a feeling that has been cleaned - difficult to say because the registry entries in removal instructions I found weren't there) and possibly a virus could be to blame. I would usually format but I want to avoid that to be honest and would rather get around it another way but there's a hitch or two.

I've managed to clear off the majority of problems with Adaware, Spybot Search and Destroy and AVG but there's still some stuff on there hijacking the browser leading her to different sites to what she's clicking on and ads popping up from the taskbar to buy spyware scanners. I've got it down to one message popping up from the notification area and the browser hijacking so I'm getting there. This is where the problems start though....

1. Trend Micro's House Call cannot complete a full scan. It's picking up a lot of stuff but then the browser (IE7) closes part way through the scan. The scanner just hangs in Mozilla Firefox and won't run from Opera. Same happens rebooting into Safe Mode but I haven't tried the IE Safe Mode (which I plan to next time I take a look at it).

2. Adaware cannot complete a deep scan and crashes at a certain point. Quick Scans work.

3. The Cleaner crashes at a certain point.

4. Norton Anti Virus, Kaspersky and AVG aren't picking up anything wrong.

I plan on running Windows Defender next time I take a look at it too but I was wondering if anyone else had any other suggestions for free scanners with free removal that can get rid of the problems that are left. As I said, formatting is a last resort despite being the best option as I don't think she has the recovery discs to hand right now.

Any suggestions for scanners out there? Cheers all!
 
Nevermind. Just saw the sticky. Something there should be useful but still open to suggestions.
 
Nevermind. Just saw the sticky. Something there should be useful but still open to suggestions.


You seem to be running the right stuff, type msconfig in run nad remove ticks for start up of anything that looks suss, have you tried spybot, search and destroy ? also run yr progs in safe mode with system restore turned off. once yr finished and clean , turn sys restore back on
 
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