Uncreative Labs

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As you guys may know, I work as an A+ Certified Technician at a local computer store. One of my jobs is to remove spyware and adware from people's computers. When I took the courses at college the instructors didn't really go into spyware/adware removal. The A+ tests really didn't cover the subject. They just gave it lip service but really didn't give is much in regards to pointers about removing it. They said download spybot and ad-aware and if on an xp installation use MS AntiSpyware.

What do you guys think the best approach to take is in regards to removing spyware from the system? Because when it is removed sometimes upon startup in a win9x system I get dialog boxes that say cannot find DKJLD.DLL or something of the like. How do I remove those messages from the system. I did a DLL search online and several of these missing DLLs are spyware/adware related so I don't want to replace the files.

Anyhelp and pointers would be greatly appreciated.

Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2005 9:32 pm

Format and reinstall. Once a machine has been compromised, that's the ONLY way to know it's safe.

Do run ad-aware and spybot, and keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Look for toolbars and uninstall them. Also, look at your programs list (in 98 ) [BLASTED SMILIES.] and see if there's anything running there that shouldn't be. In NT, you can look at the process list which makes things easier when searching for bad software.

Check system.ini, win.ini, msconfig, the startup folder, autoexec.bat and perhaps even config.sys (if it exists.) Look for anything that's out of the ordinary and unexplained.

If you find a process that doesn't look like it belongs, use a search engine to see what it does. There are huge lists of file names and the associated softwares out there, you just have to find them.

Good hunting.

Joined: 02 Oct 2004 Posts: 594 Location: Western NC

Quote:

Format and reinstall. Once a machine has been compromised, that's the ONLY way to know it's safe.

Furthermore, stop using Internet Explorer. Use Firefox or Opera instead. Using alternate browsers is a safer (though not 100% foolproof) way of avoiding the scripts written to attack IE vulnerabilities...