Manually remove viruses – Part 1
Now we will see how we can remove viruses manually. Because, sometimes the antivirus we installed does not seem to do its job. This is where we have do it the hard way. The first thing you have to do, is to locate the viruses running in memory. Press ctrl-alt-del to get the task-manager. Look for suspicious processes in that list, if you are familiar with the process list of your system (If you are not familiar, then all are suspicious). And then look up the suspicious processes in Google, and find out information on them. If the information(if you trust it) says that it is dangerous, then right-click on the entry and in the menu that pops up, click “End process tree”. Similarly, end all suspicious processes.
My Windows Task Manager
Some viruses will deny your access to the task-manager. If so, go to ‘Start > Run > cmd.exe’, and type in ‘tasklist’ and press enter. Then again, you will get the running processes’ list. Here, you will have to use the command ‘taskkill’, to kill a running process. Type in ‘taskkill /?’ for info on the command. For example, if you have Notepad running, you can kill that process by typing “taskkill /im notepad.exe”and pressing enter. Where ‘im’ means that the input is a process-image-name.
Tasklist in console
Please remember that System(PID=4), System Idle Process(PID =0), winlogon.exe, services.exe, lsass.exe, svchost.exe, smss.exe,… are legitimate Windows processes. It is advised not touch any processes under SYSTEM, NETWORK SERVICE, and LOCAL SERVICE unless you are confident and familiar with these things.
You can also get a full-permission Task Manager for temporary purposes from patheticcockroach.com. I have personally checked the program. It gives you access to task manager by double-clicking it, when ctrl-alt-del is denied by the virus.
Assuming that this stage is a complete success, we have stopped all running virus programs. And thus, hopefully, stopped the virus from making all our efforts go waste.
Read Full Post | Make a Comment ( 9 so far )USB Virus/Autorun Virus Identification
The most common form of virus today in college campuses, companies, file-sharing cirlces, and other institutions is the sticky USB pen drive virus.
Virus targets —> USB:\autorun.inf
Virus slows —> The startup of Windows.
Virus stays —> In ‘%windir%\system32\’ (%windir% stands for windows directory eg: ‘c:\WINDOWS’). This is the most common and safest place for the viruses.
Virus hides —> My Computer > Menu Bar > Tools > Folder options (so that the user will not be able to un-hide hidden and system files, so that the viruses won’t get exposed to the user)
Virus denies —> Access to Task Manager, regedit.exe, msconfig(start up configurations), and other admin utilities saying “you don’t have admin privileges” or something like that, even if you are the admin. Also denies the right click & open(and then, you double click, which activates the autorun virus) of the USB drive via explorer, and won’t allow formatting of the drive.
Virus names —> Itself as a camouflaged program that resemble a legitimate Windows process. For example ‘System’ (which is a real windows core process). The virus is named ‘system.exe’ and stores itself in ‘%windir%\system32\’. The fact is, for a common Windows XP user, there is no such program named ‘system.exe’ in ‘%windir%\system32\’ or ‘%windir%’ itself. This virus can be seen running in task manager(ctrl-alt-del) as ‘system.exe‘, alongside the real Windows process named ‘System‘ that has a constant PID 4 with the User Name SYSTEM instead of the real user account name, say jais. Another disguised program that i recently ‘End Process’ed calls itself ‘explorcr.exe’ to resemble the actual XP desktop process named ‘explorer.exe’. There are also stupid and random-letter virus names like bad1.exe, bad2.exe, bad3.exe, dfjhw.exe, uwnwef.exe . So keep a watch on the task manager’s process list.
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