There are a few free online virus scanners out there. I suspect that I have viruses that my virus protection can't catch. Can anyone suggest a good online virus scanner for me to use? I usually use Trend Micro.

I tried Panda (www.panda.com I suppose), but it only searches and doesnt clean (naturally). Also, I think McAfee has one on its website (haven't tried it, though).

If all else fails, I suggest you download Hitman Pro, that will install some 7-8 spyware cleaning programs (spybot, ad-aware, spyware doctor, CSS Shredder and so on). It will do almost everything automatically, from downloading updates to controlling your mouse, which was kind of scary, but in the end it worked.

Each time you do a spyware scan, shut down your PC for a few minutes, some of those malicious programs can hide in RAM, so they'll just respawn otherwise. I had a nasty trojan recently, kept killing the sound card drivers.

Use Firefox as your internet browser.

Usually they do this when you reboot. Pays to clean out your memory instead.

I do my computer cleaning with regedit, AutoRuns (lets you see exactly what your computer loads on startup), EndItAll2 (lets you kill programs that are running, and also gives you an idea as to where they are on your harddrive so you can delete them), and of course, Windows Explorer (lets you delete stuff).

But I never have anything to clean off, regardless as to what people say about Microsoft Internet Explorer. I've spent a lot of time cleaning other peoples machines, though.

Keep in mind that these tools will allow you to cripple pretty much any program your computer runs, up to and including Windows. Don't disable programs unless you're dead sure they shouldn't be there, or unless you know how to get your Start Menu and desktop back should you accidently delete them.

Yeah, I messed up my computer real good last time I monkeyed about with Regedit. A bit like the time my friend decided that that there file called "config.sys" was a waste of space and deleted it.

BitDefender Online seems to work OK for me. It's murdered one virus at least, only god knows how many other there are left in my rig. They're preventing me from sending files by Email.

Get Microsoft AntiSpyware, it's free and it's very good.

The problem with some spyware and viruses is that they are started with Windows, and therefore very hard to get rid of. To avoid having to play around with the registry and all that stuff, I pick the HD out of the PC and put it in an external HD frame (costs very little). Then I scan if from another PC, and put it back in. Problem solved.

I once had a nasty piece of spyware that kept respawning whenever I restarted Windows. Removing it with Ad-Aware, which I generally find highly effective (and it's free) only worked until the next time I restarted.

In th end, I got rid of it by manually locating and deleting the .dll file that it was respawning from.

I really wouldn't reccommend this approach unless you are damm sure you are not going to delete a vital file, although Slaughter's suggestion of hooking the hard drive up to another computer has the advantage that you would easily be able to back up a file before deletig it and restore it if necessary. I got away with it because I was able to deduce when the spyware had got onto my system down to the minute.

I just noticed that I seem to have 3 instances of IEXPLORE.EXE running at the same time. Is this normal or are two of them spyware/trojans?

@Gungadin:

Visit ScanWith.com as that site has many useful (and often free) system scanning and cleaning tools (ranging from geared towards spyware, spam, virus, net attacks, etc.).

Also, you should get a peiece of software that enables you to create multiple 'system restore points' as some virus/trojans hole up on past restore points and a simple way to evict them is to bump them off with alternate SRPs.

::

Here's a link to the aforementioned ScanWith site, directly pointing to a small, but very handy, bit of freeware that allows you to wipe out those nasty 'access restricted' files so frequent with malware & Co.

Good luck catching that bugger!

@Gungadin:
Depends on how many IE browser windows you have open and how you've openend them. You'll get one for every time you've opened it from any IE shortcut. But new ones won't be added if you right click a link and choose open in a new window nor going to the File menu -> New -> Window (CTRL-U)

Note: This is applicable to Windows 2000 SP4 with IE6 SP1 fully updated. Others might differ.

Avast antivirus is what I use on my laptop.
http://www.avast.com/

There's a free for personal use version that just requires a simple free registration.
It uses a bit more memory than most anti-virus scanners (with the exception of the behmoth that it the evil Norton AV) but then it does include network scnners and webpage scanners etc.

Spyware scanners I recomend Lavasoft's Ad-Aware.
http://www.lavasoftusa.com/
Again there's a free personal edition that works very well. Just one it once a month or something to scan and clean your PC.

Firewall software I guess you can either use Win XPs own built in firewall which isn't too bad. Or if you want more control you can download the free version of ZoneAlarm which is what I use on my home PC.
http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/home.jsp