How to remove a virus from your computer for free

I've pretty much been over how to remove a virus from your computer for free, but I figure since there are people searching for this term directly, I would make a post on it so everyone could just find it easier.

The first part of the question, how to remove a virus from you computer, is probably the hardest part. Even when you have the right sofware, ie: anti virus, anti spyware, anti malware, anti rootkit, etc. it's not always a walk in the park.

First off, you'll need to know you limits on the infected computer. Can you get on the internet? Can you search? Do you get redirected? Do you already have an anti virus program and it keeps finding the exact same virus, malware, trojan horse, rootkit, etc. again and again even though it says it removes it? Can you even run the infected machine? Is it so slow you want to beat your face with a keyboard? It's these things you want to pay attention to, because it will effect how "free" fixing your computer will be.

Take into account that doing this yourself "for free" might take several days, so if you need the infected machine for school, college or business you may want to consider the catching up you'll have to do, or how much you'll be losing business wise per day you are trying to fight this thing, by yourself, little/no experience doing it, and removing a virus for free instead of paying.

But, I digress, lets get back to how to remove a virus from your computer for free. I mean, thats what you're here for right?

To begin, you'll need a few different anti virus and anti spyware programs. You should download (in no specific order): Malware bytes, AVG, Avira, Avast, Hitman Pro, AVG Anti Rootkit and the free 30 day trial of Kaspersky Anti Virus or Kaspersky Internet Security.

If you can't use your main computer, download them on another machine, put them on a CD or a thumb drive and put them onto the infected computer. From there, try to install one of them. If one doesn't work, try the next. If none of them work, you may need to restart in Safe Mode. For those of you who don't know, Safe Mode is where ALMOST nothing starts up on the machine, leaving you with Windows required files only. You need to restart you computer, and on most machines you just keep hitting F8 until the screen comes up for you to choose how you want to start up. You will want to choose "Safe Mode With Networking" if at all possible. If for any reason you get stuck at one of the startup items, the virus, malware, trojan, rootkit, etc. likely damaged windows.

Assuming you made it in, begin installing each of the anti virus/anti spyware programs in turn and run them. Be sure they are updated if they offer an update button on their interface.

IF you can, from this point, clear out the restore points if at all possible. Generally speaking, a virus, malware, trojan horse, rootkit, etc. will hide in the system restore. To clear them out, all you need to do is turn off system restore, and it's done differently for every operating system. If you want to know how, read one of my other posts, I've talked about how to clear out system restore and don't want to write about it again. I just might, at a later date, edit those post and add it for fun.

Anyways, after you clear the system restore, and scan your machine with as many of the free anti virus/anti spyware/anti rootkit programs as possible, restart your machine normally. If that works, you did it for free. If not, you'll need to pay someone else to do it, or read another one of my posts on some tools that you can buy to hook up your infected hard drive to another clean hard drive and scan that way.

I hope I was able to help you learn a bit on how to remove a virus from your computer for free.

TechSavvyT
Answering all your obscure virus, malware, trojan horse, adware, spyware, rootkit, boot sector virus and worm needs.