There are many anti-malware programs out there that will clean your system of nasties, but what happens if you’re not able to use such a program? Autoruns, from SysInternals (recently acquired by Microsoft), is indispensable when removing malware manually.
There are a few reasons why you may need to remove viruses and spyware manually:
- Perhaps you can’t abide running resource-hungry and invasive anti-malware programs on your PC
- You might need to clean your mom’s computer (or someone else who doesn’t understand that a big flashing sign on a website that says “Your computer is infected with a virus – click HERE to remove it” is not a message that can necessarily be trusted)
- The malware is so aggressive that it resists all attempts to automatically remove it, or won’t even allow you to install anti-malware software
- Part of your geek credo is the belief that anti-spyware utilities are for wimps
Autoruns is an invaluable addition to any geek’s software toolkit. It allows you to track and control all programs (and program components) that start automatically with Windows (or with Internet Explorer). Virtually all malware is designed to start automatically, so there’s a very strong chance that it can be detected and removed with the help of Autoruns.
We have covered how to use Autoruns in an earlier article, which you should read if you need to first familiarize yourself with the program.
Autoruns is a standalone utility that does not need to be installed on your computer. It can be simply downloaded, unzipped and run (link below). This makes is ideally suited for adding to your portable utility collection on your flash drive.
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