Cleaning Windows computers

Cleaning malware from Windows computers seems to be a recurring topic here. Sometimes you have to get creative, like removing an infected computers drive and adding it to a clean & protected Windows system in the hopes of cleaning it. The reason is that once infected, the infection invariably will try to protect itself. By putting the infected drive in a clean system, the hope is that an uncompromised system will have a better chance of eradicating the malware.

Another approach is to get a rescue boot cd which invariably runs a form of Linux and boot the infected CD on the infected system. It is a similar approach in that you are now running linux and not your infected Windows OS. I've used this approach with success in the past as well. You can get free rescue CDs from Kapersky, AVG, Avira, Bitdefender, and others. Well, there's a new option that is easier to use from the friendly folks at Microsoft. Follow this link to the free download for either 32 or 64 bit Windows systems. It is a bootable Windows CD that will try to clean your computer. It's not a silver bullet but it is another tool for your toolbag.

http://connect.microsoft.com/systemsweeper

I have something similar on my Lenovo PCs. Lenovo gives you the option of creating bootable CDs or DVDs. Works great.

my windows 7 would not let me burn the system sweeper 32 bit--?????

freetown fred wrote:my windows 7 would not let me burn the system sweeper 32 bit--?????

You download an executable, you execute the executable and that assembles an ISO file. You then burn an ISO image. Where does the process fail?

now you understand my problem

I've found that fire ......... and / or a big effin' sledgehammer ............ cleans windows computers quite nicely.

Now that one I understand--thanx Smitty

The key is to create restore DVD's when the system is new I cannot stress this enough. I work at a university that gives our users the "LUXURY" of reimageing their systems to day one. Not all have this luxury, and rebuilding their systems can be quite a chore. An external hard drive from Seagate or many others is soo important for the common computer user. The utilities that come with them truly save many users critical data. Lenovo's system toolbox is valuable as well to the novice user.

Freetown, don`t feel like your all alone all this stuff is about as clear to me as that rap & hip-hop stuff, dare I say it might have a tad bit to do with age & the fact that there is still outside work to be done. My neighbor still hasn`t got the fields cut, mostly weeds now, I know the first cut isn`t that good anyway but even a city guy knows that the second won`t grow until the first is gone. Gonna have about about a thousand bails of crap, now that we can understand. Cleaning the windows to me is done from the outside with a bucket & squeezie, besides that my comp. has a built in recovery thing.

Bucket & squeezie, now that's my world. My DSL provider (Frontier) just gave all users a free??? anti-everything set-up & I burned a back-up-disk per instructions--it's called core security--I don't know how well it works--can't see it, but it runs auto every day & tells me NO bad stuff found so far---I guess????

Buy a Mac.

Even Mac's are no longer safe from attacks...
Never were but now the target is on them even more...