How To Clean Up Malware?

Many people refer to malicious software as the malware. This deadly software can ruin most of the functionalities of your computer. Malware can get to your computer through many mediums such as a floppy drive, CD drive, pen drive, internet etc. Internet is the main source of malware in most cases.There is a very well planned trap set up by the bad guys, to get your computer infected. A very lucrative sounding popup would appear to you, claiming to do a free virus scan on your computer. Once you invite it for the same, you have actually invited the trouble. You would soon be offered to install an anti virus program that would clean up virus from your computer. Many people also get fooled to pay for the fake anti virus. This is an ugly situation, wherein you could end up paying for getting your computer ruined.

Scareware is another term used to refer the malware. Microsoft has reported more than 4.4 million computers that are infected by the malware as of today. Some commonly known malware programs are Personal antivirus, XP antivirus, DriveCleaner, RapidAntiVirus, Antivirus’09, and WiPC antivirus. You should only stay away from such programs.

How to fight the malware? In case your computer is suffering with malware, you may want to read on to discover the remedies. It is however not a cake walk to get rid of the malware. Below are the guidelines to do the same.

The first thing that you must always do is to take the back up of your critical and important files. Before you start any operations to get rid of malware, make sure you have a copy of your important data. You would not want to lose out on your important data as a result of fighting the malware. You may take a backup on a flash USB drive, Floppy drive (if sufficient), or on a CD drive.

Installing an anti malware on your infected computer may rarely work for you. Unless the malware is too weak, your anti malware will never be able to clean up the smart malware program. It is advisable to install an anti malware software, well before you fall into trouble. Installing it on an infected computer may rarely solve the issue.

An alternative is to install and run an anti malware software in safe mode. Once in safe mode, the computer would not allow the malware or any other programs to perform any independent operations. This will allow you to use your anti malware program to scan and clean up the computer. The sad part is that sometimes your OS may also be infected with malware. In such cases, the safe mode will not help the cause either.

Now, we discuss the arguably best means of removing malware. Disconnect your infected hard disk from your computer and reconnect it to another computer as data (not primary). The computer you connect to must already have a good anti malware installed. This will allow the anti malware to effectively remove the malware. You may want to repeat the process with many computers installed with different anti malware software. This is a time taking job, but worth the effort.

In case it does not harm you, formatting the hard disk is the finest option. The format option will clean up anything and everything on the hard disk. You can then install a fresh copy of OS on your system.