I have seen all sorts of infected computers with malware and viruses in them.
Just a few months ago, getting rid of malware was relatively easy. We would perform and run spyware scans, antivirus scans, review the registry and the files in startup.
Recently, I have found that once a computer is infected with Trojan Viruses, it is not easy to make sure these threats are gone. I end up spending extra time in making sure a computer is clean.
I worked on a computer where the system tray where the anti-virus would have been was disabled. It was hard to tell if the system tray was originally corrupted or whether the Trojan Viruses caused this. Everything looked good except for this. I could tell by additional scans that Trojan Viruses were still in the computer. Instead of spending 8 additional hours cleaning the computer, I reformatted the computer to make 100% sure that the computer didn’t have any remnants of viruses and spyware.
I discourage anyone to clean up a computer on their own. This is because most of the time, the problems can increase ten-fold. However, we find ourselves often giving out information and advice on how to backup, what protection to use, and in troubleshooting problems.
If necessary we can remote in to your computer. More often, we will recommend that the work on your computer is done directly in our office.
