Best Malware Removal Tools

I voted for Spybot because I've had it since forever; however, since I changed the settings for how my computers accept cookies, Spybot has not found anything in many years. I use both XP Home and Vista Home Premium. I continue to upgrade Spybot and it continues to find nothing. Sometimes I wonder if it is working.

Spybot S&D, Lavasoft Ad-Aware, AVG Free antivirus, Zonealarm free firewall, and most of all - Stop suing Internet Exploder - get Firefox, Opera, Chrome, et al, and USE them.

No. There are periodic reports that say some variation of that theme, but the Firefox guys fix holes much faster than Microsoft. Also, there are basic architectural considerations - if MSIE hits a page that wants to download and install a plug-in to play content, it does so silently. Firefox tells me whenever a website wants to install a plug-in - cuts down the ability to do drive-by malware installations tremendously.

No, you're just proving the point that it's a user problem, not necessarily a machine problem. Educate the user, problem's solved. Keeping a system clean is really, really simple.

I think malware bytes is the best all around tool but Hijackthis is the most precise and powerful...but only when an experienced person gets their hands on the logs. Also, Combofix is not a "removal tool" is it?

You people just don't know enuf about SUPERAntiSpyware. If you did you would all be voting for it, way more then the rest!!!

The latest AVG is bloated garbage. NOD 32 is much more thorough and catches items AVG misses regularly. Also doesn't use nearly as many system resources. I stopped recommending AVG once they started following Nortons route of bloatware.

AVG is crap since it turned V8 it let my computer get infected twice and it slows your computer to a crawl. (I used V7 on every PC I owned till the update) I managed to identify the infection with Avira AntiVir and remove manually using HijackThis! I now use Avast but I am hearing that Comodo Antivrus has improved a lot thanks to financing off its firewalls success (Which I happily use since Sygate Personal Firewall stopped getting updated) but I may test out on one of my systems! If I went the pay route it would be Kaspersky or NOD32 all the way depending on price and which of the 2 had the winning detection rating at the time!

AVG has always been crap.. first AVG I ever used, after that I didn't use anti-virus for 3 or 4 years. Now i found things like malwarebytes that i dont need running in the background to be protected.

It doesn't shock me that everyday users feel they can use a program to disinfect their computers. What floors me is that so called IT professionals who's companies livelyhood depends on their information infrastructure trust their system after supposedly removing an infections. If I was interviewing an IT guy who said anything other than reformat and reinstall (or possible re-image), their resume would go in the garbage.

Actually that doesn't always work either, just do a quick search for "rootkits"...those can get past anything and everything...and can infect your bios.

I've been in IT for 25 years. Your guy are more than welcome to go to all the trouble of wiping your system and reinstalling everytime you get some malware. If you actually know what your doing, you can trust your system after it gets infected with malware. Watch where you browse and what you open and you hardly even need protection. If you do have a problem, one of the many free antivirus along with any two or more of these tools will almost always take care of the problem.

I just realized: "FORMAT C: is the only safe way. Or you can completely reload the OS" What os are you using anyway? You can use Format c: and NOT completely reload your OS? I'm wondering if you've actually ever reinstalled a pc (in the last 15 years or so anyway)

You can call me any name you like. I like ignorant boob. If you do the recommended reading about rootkits that ddthesm recommends, you'll find my "opinion" about this to be pretty mainstream if you filter out all sites that hock programs that claim to remove them. If you are so smart besides network and bios and or other firmware reinfection (good point BTW, but pretty unlikely) how does reformatting and reinstalling not get rid of a rootkit? Of course you don't do reformat from inside the infected OS, you use a known good bootdisk to do it. Tell you what, you can screw around trying to get every last piece of malware out of the system and spends hours of time and never be sure if you got it all or I can come reformat the drive and re-image with a good image and be done in less than half an hour.

Let me answer my own smarmy question, you got to wipe the MBR record too. That may or may not happen depending on what you use.

That's a good combination I've used for cleaning before i just added HijackThis. I couldn't live with Avira Though! I think people like Spybot S&D for its tools and Host file inoculation really, as I never used its realtime scanners!

Yeah, I used Spyware S&D a lot until DL the free version of SUPRERAntiSpyware and realizing how much Spybot missed. I ran them back to back for months and Spybot would come back clean every time while the other would always catch something.

A lot of the newer scanners don't detect or remove older variants of malware, so it is still a vaiable and reliable scanner. (but by no means should it be considered the best of the best anymore)

That's why you partition. So when a room in your house becomes infested, you only have to tear apart that room.

This may be a terribly stupid question, but do you know of any good tutorials on partitioning as a form of computer protection. I know how to partition. What I am really looking for is a tutorial on sandboxing (?).

have you taken a look at a free tool called sandboxie? it has really become quite advanced, yet very simple to use. sandboxie.com

Wow no-one in a flaming mood or did I cover all the baddies? I'm shocked not even a smug remark from the Mac/Linux crowd stating their elevation from having to weed out the crud!

I have to disagree with on Norton. The latest versions (2008 and later) are much improved and very good. And I would add Panda to your list because it is slow and its caused BSODs for me.

I agree. Unless it doesn't qualify for some reason, I really don't understand why Ad-Aware isn't on this list. It's always been tops in my boo

I still can't believe Spybot S&D is leading the poll when SAS and Anti-Malware are much better choices.

I think Spybot has been around alot longer and people are going with the tried and true one. I quit using Spybot several years ago. It would ALWAYS say I had "Avenue A" as an infection, but it would never get rid of it. Finally I ran Spybot on a new XP installation that had not been on the internet. Spybot said it had Avenue A. That was it for me.

Oh, exactly the same thing happened to me. The Avenue A thingy, even on a fresh, unused install, one that I hadn't even surfed the Web with yet. Spybot "caught it" many times, on many fresh installs. I started thinking it was crapware, since McAfee antivirus used to do the same thing - always catch two infections that the computer didn't actually have, which was done to make you think the program was doing it's job, therefore you should "trust" it. It is always exactly at the moment that devs start hard-coding programs to consistently deliver false positives that I stop using said programs. I still like Spybot because it offers other useful tools, but I haven't kept a copy on my computer in over a year because it hasn't "caught" anything outside of the phony Ave A thingy in years and the only useful tool it possesses that I don't already have within another program is the one tool I can't stand: the Tea Timer. Like Sandboxie, it's just plain too restrictive.

I disagree. Many infections are pretty minor and can be easily removed with these tools with no damage afterwards. I mean, yeah, for some, that is the best option, but no need to just do that all the time. Extra work for nothing.

Or you could make an image with norton ghost or a similar program, and then no reinstall's needed, you can reset your system in 5 minutes.

Anybody who says this, or anything like this, is a candidate for remedial computing help. If you're so lazy or clueless as to mess up a Windows system, you'll do the same to any other OS out there, sooner or later, likely sooner. You're the PEBCAK the helpdesk people cringe at. There is no prevention better than that of a savvy user, and they're all too few, whatever OS is up for discussion.