Pensacola Computer Help Technoblog

It seems that there is another ‘wave’ of scareware running through the Pensacola area (and probably everywhere), as I have seen a number of systems this past week infected with the latest batch of malware that tries to scare the user by constant pop-ups telling them their computer is infected with this or that. With names like Security Suite, Antivirus 2010, Security 360, these latest malware infections are part of a growing trend of scareware. Often a computer is first infected with a virus or malware which has a sole purpose of downloading other malware behind the scenes and within hours of the original infection, your computer has multiple infections and slows down to a crawl. When these types of infections hit, the best thing to do is immediately shut down your computer (Don’t click on any of the pop-ups or links!), and then start the fixing/healing process.

Depending on the severity of the infection, there is hope that you can easily remove the problem yourself. The first step is to reboot into ’safe mode’ – you can do this by restarting the computer, and pressing the F8 key before Windows starts to load (generally I recommend pressing the F8 key about once a second as soon as the computer restarts). Once you get into safe mode, you will want to chose the option to try to Restore your system to an earlier time (this is Windows System Restore – not to be confused with the Manufacturers Restore which you don’t want to use at this point because that will erase your hard drive). Windows System Restore will basically move your system back to a point before it was infected, making the virus/malware files inactive – I recommend picking a date at least a couple of days before you first noticed the symptoms of the infection. If System restore is successful (it will tell you whether or not it worked when your computer restarts and gets back into Windows), you then need to run a full antivirus and antispyware/malware scan  to remove any remnants of the virus/malware (make sure to update your antivirus/antispyware software before running the scan). If System restore doesn’t work, or there are no restore points available, then depending upon your level of computer skills, you can either attempt manual removal, or take it to a professional (please not the squad of geeks, or any large consumer electronics store repair as they will overcharge you and you take the risk of losing all your data if you don’t have a current backup).

These infections come in from many sources, the most popular being through social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace etc. Never click on links or update any computer software from within Facebook or MySpace type sites. Another way of getting these infections is through email attachments – you should never download or open any email attachment unless you specifically know that a specific person was sending you an attachment – people who FWD constantly all the ‘funny’ messages with links to videos and such are some of the worst spreaders of these types of infections. Clicking a link in an email can lead you to a malicious website that can install this bad software on your computer. Make sure you have adequate and up-to-date antivirus and antispyware/antimalware softare installed and running on your machine – check out Pensacola Computers Tech Support page  for info and links to the best free and paid for Antivirus and Antispyware products.