AvG, Ad-Aware, Spybot Search & Destroy

I recently installed an old harddrive as a slave on my home computer and unfortunately it had viruses, malware, spyware, browser hijackers, and rootkits on it.

I haven't been using a virus program so when I began having problems and couldn't get any of the malware programs to work I downloaded AVG and began looking for viruses.

Unfortunately it was too late. I had a particularly nasty rootkit and browser hijackers that prevented me from updating Ad-Aware, Spybot S & D, and AvG. I was able to manually download updates but after running several 3-4-5 hour scans with each one removing a virus here, a malware there, a bho here it never got to the root of the problem.

I would try to look on the web for a solution but if it was a link from Google or Yahoo 90% of the time I would be redirected. It was very frustrating. The only successful links I could manage were at www.metacrawler.com which I think was because the links opened in a new window.

I neglected to mention that last week I had been looking for a program to send out bulk emails for my business but was also looking for keygens to unlock the full potential of those programs. I remember a couple of times when I was browser jacked and install screens popped up. I suppose this added a few worms and trojans to my list.

Anyway after a bunch of scans and an aborted attempt at Panda Security I went back to metacrawler and found a forum that gave me some good information. There was a link to Bleeping Computer with a download for a program called ComboFix. I read the information and honestly it only vaguely suggested that it might help my ailing computer. Also I'm very skeptical about downloading stuff just because a web page says it will help. But I had a virus program and 3 malware programs doing active duty to detect anything malicious that comes through my cable modem.

I downloaded the program and then reread the instructions and became even more suspicious because it was telling me to close all of my active virus and malware detection programs. In consternation I did so and prayed excessively that when I clicked on the program it wouldnt be the end of my hard drive.

The information is here: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/combofix/how-to-use-combofix

I testify that this program is in no way malicious and that after going thru the hoops like it directed me it removed 2 rootkits of virus/malware/bho/worms. After it deleted the things it thought were malicious I was immediately able to update AVG, Ad-Aware, and Spybot S & D.

I still have a couple of more scans that I have to run with the updated virus and malware programs but as yet I have had no browser hijacks/redirects and as I said I was able to download updates to virus/malware programs that I couldn't do before.

I hope this bit of information is a help to some of you in the computering world.