A friend of the family came to me as a last resort to fixing her laptop problem. She believed that the laptop was infected with a virus and/or spyware. She consulted two professional computer repair techs, their answers were simple, reformat and reinstall the OS. In many instances, I may have offered the same solution. But, in her situation being that she is a school teacher and it being mid session, this is not a viable solution.
On my first inspection of the laptop, it did not appear to be acting out of the norm. I just began my normal maintenance routine. Cleaned useless icons off of the desktop, disk cleanup, removed pointless programs and obvious spyware from Add/Remove Programs, changed unnecesary services to 'manual' from 'automatic', cleaned out temporary internet files and internet history, and lastly made some tweaks on the Windows OS to gain some more performance. It wasn't until I went onto the web via Internet Explorer that I noticed anything abnormal. It was then that well known websites were unable to be displayed. I made a few attempts to access Lavasoft's website to download the renown Ad-Aware Software but my attempts were futile. So I took a new approach to this endeavor. I rebooted the laptop and proceded to enter "Safe Mode with Networking" by pressing 'F8' just before Windows began to boot.
Safe mode can prove to be a very handy tool to battle spyware and viruses because the operating system only boots the necesary processes required for the OS to function. This is important because if a computer is infected with spyware or viruses, there is a good chance that the infection will not "Activate" while in safe mode, leaving it in a dormant state.
While in safe mode I was able to open IE and navigate back to Lavasoft's website with no problems what so ever. I downloaded and installed Ad-Aware Personal SE. I updated it, scanned and it found about 40 critical objects, good start.
Next step was to get Grisoft's AVG Antivirus from their website. Now, the only downfall is that AVG uses windows components to install that are not available in safe mode. So I used safe mode as an avenue to download the software to the desktop. Rebooted, installed, updated, and scanned. Found 5 viruses, it was able to clean them.
Here is what ruffles my feathers! 2 computer "Professionals" both looked at her laptop and said that the hard drive needed to be reformatted and the OS reinstalled. One of the "Professionals" came to his conclusion by installing Microsoft's Beta Antispyware software onto the laptop. He figured that if that software couldn't fix it, then there was nothing he could do. First off, never count on beta software to fix any problems, especially from Microsoft. Lastly, he didn't even attempt to see if it was a virus that was causing her woes.
Total time spent at the keyboard freeing her computer from the grasps of viruses and spyware, approximately 45 minutes. It's "Profesionals" like that, that ruin the reputation of IT Profesionals everywhere. If you "Profesionals" are reading this, please pick a new carreer, I here waste removal is nice this time of year.
Cheers!
--Doc
