Happy New Year people!

I'm at my grandfather's house for the first time in years (I live more than a thousand kilometers away and almost always get to see him in other cities), together with my family and it's great. :)

But after taking a good look at my grandpa's PC, it's terribly full of malware.

Is there a good tool to remove that is free? I tried something called spyhunter that identified a load of things, but asked for me to register when I asked it to remove them. T__T

Also tried Spybot, but it didn't find anything at all, I'm not sure I was using the correct scanning options.

AVG always used to do a decent job - but I no longer use it due to issues on the older PC, so got out of the habit.

Only MBAM, Superduper is just crap. :p

It's the same combination I use. :D

I second Malwarebytes Anti-Malware to clean the system.

After that I'd recommend installing Sandboxie and have your grandfather connect only through that to the Internet from now on. He'll likely not have any viruses or malware issues again.

Sounds like something Nixon would say

These + install Microsoft Security Essentials after. SAS finds stuff that MBAM does not (cookie/spyware/adware related), while MBAM kills the hard to get stuff.

Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool + HijackThis + RegUnlocker

And that's it :)

Adblock?

Most Malware comes through Advertisments.

these are the best combination

My go-to fixers:

MBAM
ESET online scanner (from the NOD32 folks) - http://www.eset.com/int/home/products/online-scanner/

For virus scans, I know of two:
Avast Free Antivirus 2014 = long link
and/or
Avira = http://www.avira.com/en/avira-free-antivirus

I agree with the malware tool:
Malewarebytes Anti-maleware = http://www.malwarebytes.org/

I also agree with the spyware tool:
SUPERAntispyware = http://www.superantispyware.com/


After you run them, you should use a registry cleaner:
CCleaner = http://www.piriform.com/ccleaner/download

Then definitely run disk defragger afterwards. (big cause of slow on many pcs)

(ps. for the really hard to remove stuff, usually requires a boot disk, so hopefully you can burn one)

Thanks everybody for the sugestions. I don't think my grandpa actually uses his PC, the problem is the rest of the family: aunts, uncles and cousins.

Nobody asked me to help either, I just saw it and decided to fix (though I'd rather format and reinstall windows, I just don't have the proper tools here).

I tried Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and SUPERAntiSpyware. Both found things and claimed to fix/clean them. I'm not sure, because I kept seeing uninstall programs pointed out in the remove programs list. They just wouldn't do anything, so I manually removed the entries.

Anyway, thanks everyone! :) The browsers are at least working properly now.