Viruses…Spyware…Adware… All of these computer threats can be lumped under the category “Malware”. Any malware in your system is undesirable. Not only can it expose you to further threats, malware is often poorly written and can cause your computer to slow down and even crash.
Commercial antivirus programs will do a good job in removing most viruses. But there’s an additional tool available that will compliment any anti-virus program. That program is called HijackThis. Combined with the online HijackThis File Analyzer, HijackThis will give you exceptional control over what happens in your computer.
The first step is to download Hijack This from http://free.antivirus.com/hijackthis/. Once you’ve installed and run it, you’ll see the initial HijackThis screen, as pictured below:
All you need to do is click the “Do a system scan and save a logfile” button to start analyzing your system. HijackThis will soon show a text document showing everything that’s currently running in your computer, along with what happens upon startup. As pictured below, highlight the entire text of the document and copy it.
Rather than try to figure out what all this means, we’re going to let the online HijackThis File analyzer to the work for us. Open the analyzer by going to this address: http://hijackthis.de/. As pictured below, paste your copied text into the textbox.
Now you can scroll down a bit and click the Anaylyze button. After a few moments, the analyzer will display the results, as shown in this screen:
Threats on your system will show with a big red X. Items that you will want to review have a question mark next to them. As you can see, this computer has the Ask toolbar and the Sweety animated smiley app. Both of these are considered spyware – they monitor your internet usage and push ads based on your activity.
To remove threats, just switch back to the HijackThis program and click the checkbox next to each item you want to remove.
Then click the “Fix checked” button. HijackThis may prompt you to close any Internet Explorer or Windows Explorer windows to assure the fixes get applied properly.
It’s just that simple! It’s a good idea to run HijackThis periodically, just to assure any malware hasn’t crept its way into your system.
This article is provided by Steve Smith, The Computer Psychic. All content is protected by applicable copyrights, and may not be reproduced without express consent of the author.
The information in this knowledge base article is provided “as-is” with no warranty, express or implied, as to the suitability or validity of its content. It is up to the reader of this article to determine if the steps outlined herein are appropriate for his or her use. As with all tasks on the computer, be sure to have a current backup of your data before proceeding.
