The other day I talked about how to keep you computer secure from autorun viruses and as promised today I am going to show you how you can clean the autorun virus. There are many variants of these autorun trojans out there, their job almost same however determining them is essential before we clean them up.

Determining the Variant

Thought most of these viruses does the same thing, but there may be variants of each of them. For example one variant might save itself in the “windows” directory where as the other might save itself in “windows/system32/” directory.

It is not a hard task to do if you have a couple of tools up in hand. I recommend Hijackthis, Super Spyware Removal and UnhackMe. Hijackthis and Super Spyware Removal are free of cost, where as UnhackMe is free to try.

Generate the log using Hijackthis (I may write a complete tutorial on this later) to find out where the virus has hidden itself.

Enabling Task manager

Most of these kinds of viruses directly affect your task manager and folder options. If you find your task manager not working then use the following registry to

Download this Registry file to enable Task Manager

The Final Cleansing

Now scan your computer with UnhackMe for any rootkits. You may be incited to check and verify each start up service and programs that are tied in with Windows Startup. I advice that after the scan completion you restart your computer and scan it again.

Now make a complete system scan using Super Anti Spyware. This is a great application and is updated almost daily with new malware definitions and over all, its free. It can also be used to restore msconfig utility, task manager, folder options etc that might have been denied access by the malware.

Use a better antivirus, AVG works great for me.

Now follow these steps here at How to protect your computer from autorun viruses to ensure you don’t get any such viruses and malware again