Hawk's Babble-Log

These are the programs I recommend for handling all manner of nasty stuff for Microsoft products:

- Avast! Antivirus
Excellent free virus scanner. All you need do is register with ‘em. Also does resident scanning. They update their definition lists often. Highly recommended. This program has, all by itself, removed several infestations that I’ve run across.
[http://avast.com/](http://avast.com/)

- ClamWin
Good, free, open-source virus scanner.
[http://clamwin.com/](http://clamwin.com/)

- SpyBot Search & Destroy
Excellent adware/spyware detection and removal tool. Also has a slew of advanced tools for experts.
[http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/](http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/)
or, if you don’t want the page in English:
[http://www.safer-networking.org/](http://www.safer-networking.org/)
NOTE: if you search for “Spybot”, you’ll find all mannor of other sites which are not the true homepage of the people who make SpyBot. Don’t be fooled into installing more spyware/adware/malware; always go to safer-networking.org.

- X-Cleaner
Good general-purpose utility. Most of it’s fuctions are disabled in the free version, but the most important one for our purposes is not, and it’s the first function on the list. X-Cleaner finds (and cleans) a lot of stuff.
[http://www.xblock.com/](http://www.xblock.com/)
Free version download page (as of today):
[http://www.xblock.com/freeware.php](http://www.xblock.com/freeware.php)
Free version download link direct to setup program (as of today):
[http://www.xblock.com/download/xcleaner_setup.exe](http://www.xblock.com/download/xcleaner_setup.exe)

To help you remove malware (in case the above programs can’t do it for you):

- autoruns
Probably the best way to remove stuff is to take it out of the startup when booting up in safe mode with command-line (F8). Windows has many, many ways to start programs up automatically (nearly all of which are hidden). This program lists ‘em all and lets you choose what gets run automatically every time you boot up. Extremely useful.
[http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Autoruns.html](http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Autoruns.html)