AWESOME spyware removal tool

[Bulldozer]

For the last coupke months or so my computer has been hellishly plagued by adware, spyware, and most annoying of all hijackers.
By hijackers I mean things that try to redirect internet explorer searches, homepage, or websites typed in the toolbar. The worst I had was one called www.nkvd.us (DO NOT GO TO THAT SITE!!!) which some how made its self a prefix before the http:// of every page, and therefore nothing would load unless I just searched for it through my Google toolbar.

That was all solved when I found a program called "HiJack This" earlier today. This shows you pretty much everythign possibly harmful directly from your registry, and allows you to delete it.

I reccomend downlaoding it from here : http://computercops.biz/downloads-file-328.html (btw, after you download it you must extract it to a new folder, not just run it from winzip)

If you know what your doing on a computer, you can sucessfully use it with these simple guidelines: http://computercops.biz/HijackThis.html or if your not to experienced with stuff like that you can just post your log from the program on the forums : http://computercops.biz/forum67.html and letting someone analize it for you.

All in all I found this program VERY helpful, and I give huge props to Merjin.org for making such a great program available for free.

[22benjamin22]

Hijackthis is an excellent reporting tool. It will not catch all forms of adware nor spyware, but will give you the information to compare to others and post results for guidance.

Then with a little research you can tell it to remove anything it detects.

It is more interactive than Ad Aware, and by default is dumbed down - you must participate to make it as powerfull as it has the capability to be. If you want a tool to just click "OK" to clean, use AdAware 6. I used to reccomend SpyBot Search and Destroy, but the latest full version(1.3) is missing a lot and the previous version (1.2) is no longer updated, so will miss all new ad/spy ware.

Just want to offer an alternate option for those who wish to not research why their computer is doing what it's doing - just to make it stop doing it :D

Me - I use Hijackthis to check my system and have it locked down to prevent that kind of stuff. Add to that that Internet Explorer is no longer used, and my system is pretty much maintenence free.

[Bulldozer]

Yea, I tried running spybot and AdAware, but I couldnt seem to get rid of that stupid nkvd thing no matter what.

[James the Great]

I use spybot search and destroy, that works pretty well for me.

[krazedkayaker]

Yup 22benjamin22 internet explorer is windows biggest security hole. Mozilla is alot better and with built it popup blocking it's alot easier