Tutorials & Links to Detection & Removal Tools

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Nice find Doc.

Joe

--Joe

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Thanks Joe. I thought so too. I even learned a thing or two from the tutorials. And I’m always glad to share the knowledge here.

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Thanks Joe. I thought so too. I even learned a thing or two from the tutorials. And I’m always glad to share the knowledge here.

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(Edited by jscher2000 on 26-Aug-04 14:30. Added new link per Doc’s request.)
(Edited by jscher2000 on 01-Jul-04 17:19. Added x-ref to Ken K’s star post, and a star for Doc.)

I thought it might be helpful to have a thread with links to some of the Spyware / Adware detection and removal tools most widely recommended here in the lounge, along with an easily understood and easy to follow tutorial for each. So to that end………………

A tutorial & link to Ad-aware can be found here.

A tutorial & link to Spybot Search & Destroy can be found here.

A tutorial and link to HijackThis can be found here.
(It should be noted that HijackThis is a program whose results should only be read by advanced users to determine what to fix. The wrong ‘fix’ will disable your system !! Follow the tutorial for links to the forums where help is available).

An index of links to other spyware detection & removal tools and their tutorials can be found here. See also Anti Adware, Spyware, Hijack here in the Lounge.

This is not a complete selection, and not all tools are right for every user. But it should give you a place to start when some maleware gets into your PC.

This site was just sent my way by a friend and I thought it should be posted here. It’s a fairly complete check-list of the steps to take to rid a PC of any unnecessary or unwanted junk. After all, nothing runs quite like a clean machine !!

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Doc

As well as Tutorials, do you think it would be a good idea to point also to the corresponding Support Forum(s)?

Personally, I would also have included Spyware Blaster and Spyware Guard, both from Javacool…

John

Old tagline: You know a program is useful when people want it changed!

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Hi John,

Picky, picky, picky !! But I suppose you’re right. So Here are some of the support forums and the support pages for the limited listing I posted . They are in no particular order and I cannot vouch for their reliability.

HijackThis Forum – BleepingComputer
HijackThis Support Forum – Spyware Info
HyjackThis Tutorials & Forum – Tom Cyote’s Site

Spybot Support

Ad-aware Support

Good to have you back from holiday John.

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Hi John,

Picky, picky, picky !! But I suppose you’re right. So Here are some of the support forums and the support pages for the limited listing I posted . They are in no particular order and I cannot vouch for their reliability.

HijackThis Forum – BleepingComputer
HijackThis Support Forum – Spyware Info
HyjackThis Tutorials & Forum – Tom Cyote’s Site

Spybot Support

Ad-aware Support

Good to have you back from holiday John.

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Doc

As well as Tutorials, do you think it would be a good idea to point also to the corresponding Support Forum(s)?

Personally, I would also have included Spyware Blaster and Spyware Guard, both from Javacool…

John

Old tagline: You know a program is useful when people want it changed!

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Excellent post Doc, thank you. I stuffed up ZA 4.5 today, (my fault) and have been trying to fix it. Is it still felt that the latest version of ZA does not play well with NAV 04 (on XP Pro). The sites you have listed here are helpful, think I have re-activated my existing version of ZA thanks to this post. Cheers

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Hi Cyber !! It’s been awhile. I like your new flower !!

I’ve heard rumors that they have tweaked ZA to work with Norton, but I’m not ready to be the one to find out it is still a work in progress. The older version works just fine, thank you very much, and as long as there are questions, I’ll just bide my time.

I’m glad that you found the post helpful. If it helped you to make your computer more secure, then it has served it’s purpose. Thanks for the kind words.

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Great! I have fixed the settings I stuffed up on ZA 4.5 and it is working happily again (with NAV on XP Pro), since you feel it is sufficient I will leave it as is and not try the upgraded ZA. Thank you very much for the reply Doc, appreciate it.

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Great! I have fixed the settings I stuffed up on ZA 4.5 and it is working happily again (with NAV on XP Pro), since you feel it is sufficient I will leave it as is and not try the upgraded ZA. Thank you very much for the reply Doc, appreciate it.

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ZA 5.1 Pro and Free do indeed work very well with Norton. On various systems, I am currently using:
ZA 5.1 Pro with Norton AV 2005
ZA 5.1 with Norton SystemWorks 2002
ZA 5.1 with Norton SystemWorks 2003
ZA 5.1 with Norton AV2005 and Norton SystemWorks 2002 (with Norton AV 2002 removed)

I note that the problems people had with ZA were with 5.0, which ZoneLabs rightfully acknowledged and quickly corrected with 5.1. Unfortunately, the few, very vocal folks that had problems with 5.0 have placed a stigma on an otherwise excellent product.

*****
As far as important Spyware sites, Eric Howes’ Rogue/Suspect Anti-Spyware Products &Web Sites is a “must checkout” site before considering any new anti-spyware program.

This is important considering there are many so called anti-spyware products that are actually spyware in themselves. The highly rated Spyware Eliminator is a case in point. Its parent company, Aluria Software, has entered into a partnership with WhenU.com, a well-known adware company. Spyware Eliminate does delete spyware, then promptly dumps the WhenU.com spyware on your system! I wrote an article over on CastleCops on this subject here that may be of interest.

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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ZA 5.1 Pro and Free do indeed work very well with Norton. On various systems, I am currently using:
ZA 5.1 Pro with Norton AV 2005
ZA 5.1 with Norton SystemWorks 2002
ZA 5.1 with Norton SystemWorks 2003
ZA 5.1 with Norton AV2005 and Norton SystemWorks 2002 (with Norton AV 2002 removed)

I note that the problems people had with ZA were with 5.0, which ZoneLabs rightfully acknowledged and quickly corrected with 5.1. Unfortunately, the few, very vocal folks that had problems with 5.0 have placed a stigma on an otherwise excellent product.

*****
As far as important Spyware sites, Eric Howes’ Rogue/Suspect Anti-Spyware Products &Web Sites is a “must checkout” site before considering any new anti-spyware program.

This is important considering there are many so called anti-spyware products that are actually spyware in themselves. The highly rated Spyware Eliminator is a case in point. Its parent company, Aluria Software, has entered into a partnership with WhenU.com, a well-known adware company. Spyware Eliminate does delete spyware, then promptly dumps the WhenU.com spyware on your system! I wrote an article over on CastleCops on this subject here that may be of interest.

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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The current version 5.5.062.00 also works well with Nortons.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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The current version 5.5.062.00 also works well with Nortons.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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Bill,

Thanks for the informed update. I hadn’t heard much about the ZA / Norton issue recently here in the lounge or in any of the small number of computer rags I still read. I don’t often try new products right away. I prefer to wait until someone here in the Lounge gives an informed, and usually first-hand, real-world opinion on it. Now that I have one, I’ll go over to Zone Labs and update my software. And Thank you very much !!!

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No problem and for the record, all systems mentioned above are now running ZA 5.5.062.000 with no upgrade or operational problems.

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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No problem and for the record, all systems mentioned above are now running ZA 5.5.062.000 with no upgrade or operational problems.

Bill (AFE7Ret)
Freedom isn't free!

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Bill,

Thanks for the informed update. I hadn’t heard much about the ZA / Norton issue recently here in the lounge or in any of the small number of computer rags I still read. I don’t often try new products right away. I prefer to wait until someone here in the Lounge gives an informed, and usually first-hand, real-world opinion on it. Now that I have one, I’ll go over to Zone Labs and update my software. And Thank you very much !!!

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Hi Cyber !! It’s been awhile. I like your new flower !!

I’ve heard rumors that they have tweaked ZA to work with Norton, but I’m not ready to be the one to find out it is still a work in progress. The older version works just fine, thank you very much, and as long as there are questions, I’ll just bide my time.

I’m glad that you found the post helpful. If it helped you to make your computer more secure, then it has served it’s purpose. Thanks for the kind words.

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Excellent post Doc, thank you. I stuffed up ZA 4.5 today, (my fault) and have been trying to fix it. Is it still felt that the latest version of ZA does not play well with NAV 04 (on XP Pro). The sites you have listed here are helpful, think I have re-activated my existing version of ZA thanks to this post. Cheers

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Having just come out of a week of infection with CoolWebSearch I would like to recommend the following programs to have in your toolboox in addition to those mentioned already
Pocket Killbox is a tool to simplify deleting active dll’s on re-boot
Winsock XP Fix can rebuild Internet connectivity after excessive playing with the Registry.

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Hello Doc,

I spotted your post and tried the site. The content looks good, but when I tried to print it, my PC froze – twice. Not going to try that again! Any ideas why this might have happened?

Thjanks for helping all the rest of us

Mike C

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Hi Mike,

Which site are you referring to ??? I’ve posted several links in this thread. Let men know which one you are referring to and I’ll check it out.

As to why your PC froze when you tried to print one of the web pages, I can’t really say. I usually copy and paste any information I want from a website into a Word document and then save it and then, if I want a hard copy, print it. A bit more time consuming, but it saves ink and I have a document I can refer to later if I lose the hard copy. HTH

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Hello Doc,

Sorry, I was running ahead of myself. The paragraph with the site link in it is
”
This site was just sent my way by a friend and I thought it should be posted here. It’s a fairly complete check-list of the steps to take to rid a PC of any unnecessary or unwanted junk. After all, nothing runs quite like a clean machine !!
”
It was down the bottom in post Post: 385,669/ does this pin it down for you? Sorry havent worked out how to embed a link to a post.

I had also, on the thrid attempt cut and pasted it into word. Lost all the links though

Mike C

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I went to post 385,669 and followed the link you mentioned. I was able to print the web page without problems (it took a while because it is a long article), so it doesn’t seem to be a problem with that web page itself.

PS to post a link to a post, simply select the post number including the square brackets around it in the post header: [Post: 385,669]. Press Ctrl+C to copy, then press Ctrl+V in your reply to paste. It will automatically be converted to a clickable link when you click ‘Post It’.

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Hello Hans,

So, buoyed up by your success I tried again. asked to print just the first page, the printer started then stopped without printing anything and the PC froze again. I checked another few at random and they were fine.

Odd

Cheers,

Mike C

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I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what would cause this. I hope that someone else will have a suggestion.

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Hey Mike,

I too went to the link and copied the entire article and pasted it into Word, saved it and then printed the first page.

Then I clicked on File and chose Print from the dropdown and chose the Print Selected Text option and printed the first page of that and canceled the print job. I can’t imagine what the problem could be. As Hans said, maybe someone eles has a idea.

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Can you save the page as a (loacl hard drive) web page from within in your browser, or in IE, “edit” the file in Word and then save it, and print it from either local source?

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(Edited by jscher2000 on 26-Aug-04 14:30. Added new link per Doc’s request.)
(Edited by jscher2000 on 01-Jul-04 17:19. Added x-ref to Ken K’s star post, and a star for Doc.)

I thought it might be helpful to have a thread with links to some of the Spyware / Adware detection and removal tools most widely recommended here in the lounge, along with an easily understood and easy to follow tutorial for each. So to that end………………

A tutorial & link to Ad-aware can be found here.

A tutorial & link to Spybot Search & Destroy can be found here.

A tutorial and link to HijackThis can be found here.
(It should be noted that HijackThis is a program whose results should only be read by advanced users to determine what to fix. The wrong ‘fix’ will disable your system !! Follow the tutorial for links to the forums where help is available).

An index of links to other spyware detection & removal tools and their tutorials can be found here. See also Anti Adware, Spyware, Hijack here in the Lounge.

This is not a complete selection, and not all tools are right for every user. But it should give you a place to start when some maleware gets into your PC.

This site was just sent my way by a friend and I thought it should be posted here. It’s a fairly complete check-list of the steps to take to rid a PC of any unnecessary or unwanted junk. After all, nothing runs quite like a clean machine !!

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