Re: to reformat or to try manual removal...

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Date: Wed, 21 Sep 2005 19:15:02 -0700

Hello David!

Thanks for your advice-I appreciate it. Since my friend has 54 adware
issues as opposed to viruses, I think I'm going to call it clean enough for
now, but I appreciate the additional info-which I'm sure will prove useful at
some point. What is Safe Hex? You're right in saying there needs to be a
cost benefit analysis done...I'm just not experienced enough with enough
virus/malware problems to know for ex, how long it would take to
troubleshoot/remove viruses that need to be done manually. 30 min each? How
long to perform an average reformat, including backing everything up...6 hrs?
 Would you say these are close estimates? I'd sure appreciate your input if
you have experience with this.

Thanks again!

-- 
kc stark
"David H. Lipman" wrote:
> From: "kcstark" <kcstark@discussions.microsoft.com>
> 
> | that is my question.   When confronted with adware (or malware/viruses
> | whatever) that cannot be removed by Norton, Spy Sweeper whoever, do I keep
> | following the rabbit trail at the third-party software website to try and
> | manually remove each malware, in the hope  that it will actually get fixed,
> | or should I cut my losses right up front and just reformat?  Is there some
> | guidelines you can give?  I'm more and more often being asked to help friends
> | that get hit, and I can't tell you how much time I feel I've wasted by
> | manually removing stuff, that then show up again a day later.  I'm currently
> | going with the "if I scan and find just ADWARE/SPYWARE that say, Norton can't
> | fix, then I'm just going to not worry about it, and if I find VIRUSES that
> | Norton can't fix I'm thinking I'm going to go straight for the reformat".
> | What do you recommend?  The tech support guy at Norton said, just let them
> | walk me thru it (for $70), and that it won't take very long and would be much
> | faster than a reformat...that after waiting 78 min's just to talk with him!
> | Hmmm...
> |
> | Any advice would be much appreciated!
> |
> | Thanks!
> | -- 
> | kc stark
> 
> It depends upon the number of infectors and the severity of the infectors.  If one practices
> Safe Hex then NO infectors should get on the PC.  If one doesn't practice Safe Hex then all
> the software in the world won't help.
> 
> That being said...
> 
> If the number of viruses are too high than a format is recommended.  This is rare and
> attempts at removal should be done.  At some point there a cost benefit analysis needs to be
> performed on the removal process and that will guide you to the format decision.  It should
> be only done if a backup is made so important data can be restore.  Of course after the PC
> has the OS updated, secured and anti virus software installed so that data restored is
> scanned for viruses.
> 
> The following is a good tool for removing viruses, Trojans and some other malware...
> 
> 
> Download MULTI_AV.EXE from the URL --
> http://www.ik-cs.com/programs/virtools/Multi_AV.exe
> 
> It is a self-extracting ZIP file that contains the Kixtart Script Interpreter {
> http://kixtart.org Kixtart is CareWare } three batch files, five Kixtart scripts, one Link
> (.LNK) file, a PDF instruction file and two utilities; UNZIP.EXE and WGET.EXE.  It will
> simplify the process of using;  Sophos, Trend and McAfee Anti Virus Command Line Scanners to
> remove viruses, Trojans and various other malware.
> 
> C:\AV-CLS\StartMenu.BAT -- { or Double-click on 'Start Menu' in C:\AV-CLS}
> This will bring up the initial menu of choices and should be executed in Normal Mode. This
> way all the components can be downloaded from each AV vendor’s web site.
> The choices are; Sophos, Trend, McAfee, Exit the menu and Reboot the PC.
> 
> You can choose to go to each menu item and just download the needed files or you can
> download the files and perform a scan in Normal Mode. Once you have downloaded the files
> needed for each scanner you want to use, you should reboot the PC into Safe Mode [F8 key
> during boot] and re-run the menu again and choose which scanner you want to run in Safe
> Mode.  It is suggested to run the scanners in both Safe Mode and Normal Mode.
> 
> When the menu is displayed hitting 'H' or 'h' will bring up a more comprehensive PDF help
> file.
> 
> To use this utility, perform the following...
> Execute; Multi_AV.exe { Note: You must use the default folder C:\AV-CLS }
> Choose; Unzip
> Choose; Close
> 
> Execute; C:\AV-CLS\StartMenu.BAT
> { or Double-click on 'Start Menu' in C:\AV-CLS }
> 
> NOTE: You may have to disable your software FireWall or allow WGET.EXE to go through your
> FireWall to allow it to download the needed AV vendor related files.
> 
> * * *     Please report back your results  * * *
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Dave
> http://www.claymania.com/removal-trojan-adware.html
> http://www.ik-cs.com/got-a-virus.htm
> 
> 
> 

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