How To Remove Virus Without Formatting 0
Most people reformat their hard drives every time they get a serious virus infection. But, you don’t have to do that. I can show you how to go about removing a virus without formatting the hard drive so that you can save all of your data, documents, photographs, music, videos, programs and everything else. Believe me it is possible and once you learn how, it’s not as difficult as you think.
Most of the viruses you are going to come into contact with these days are very sophisticated. You are likely to come into contact with rogue antivirus programs that go by names like Personal Antivirus, Windows XP Antivirus or something like that. Most of the old wimpy viruses of the late 1990’s and early 2000’s have been weeded off of the internet. Just about any major antivirus program on the market can protect you from and clean any of those older kinds of viruses, worms and Trojans.
The newer viruses are much more complex though. As a matter of fact, I have yet to find any of the major antivirus programs that will actually protect you from getting one of these new types of infections. The people that write these viruses stay one step ahead of the antivirus companies. It seems like every day I am seeing a new mutation of one of these types of viruses. It has been good for business, but I can tell you that I would much rather deal with the older more wimpy viruses than the ones out there today.
So, how do you go about removing one of these rogue antivirus programs that are out there?
The first step you will take really depends on how badly infected the machine is. If it is still reasonably functional and you can still get online with it, then follow the instructions I have outlined in Antivirus 2010 removal. Those steps apply to 99% of these rogue antivirus programs. Those steps will get you back to full functionality. If you can’t get online yet, then you can try a couple of other steps.
Preparing for the virus removal:
First you need to boot the computer into safe mode. To do that, you want to restart the computer. When the computer is restarting you need to press the F8 key. You will need to press the F8 key just prior to when the computer normally shows you the Windows XP splash screen. If you miss the timing, just reboot and try it again. It is okay to hit the F8 key a bunch of times. It is also okay to press it too early. It won’t hurt anything.
You should see a menu come up that offers you options of ways to start the computer. You want to select Safe Mode With Network Support. That mode gives you the use of all necessary computer components as well as internet access. Booting to safe mode may take quite a while. Just try to be patient. It may show a black screen with white writing for a while. Just remain patient.
Once you have booted to safe mode, you can try running the Windows System restore. To do that, go to Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. That will give you the option of restoring the settings for the computer to a previous date in time. If your infection isn’t real bad, this might get you to a point where you can follow the instructions outlined in remove Antivirus 2010 infection. If that doesn’t work, then continue on from here.
Looking for viral registry entries:
You can boot the computer to safe mode. Then use the windows registry editor to try to remove the registry entries that tell the computer to load the virus. If you can accomplish that, it will be much easier to finish cleaning the computer.
