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This is normally Allan's soap box, but since he's been away I'm going to step in and help him out for a moment. While I'm not particularly gifted with computers the term "I get bye" is a pretty accurate description of how I interact with them and this article is really for people who find computers and the dangers of the internet frustrating and intimidating. I tend to build my towers rather than order them built, and I upgrade comfortably without requiring an outside tech to swap out bits and boards for me. In my office I've been crowned the guy who fixes Virus laden systems, mostly because of my tenacity about defeating the Virus and my willingness to edit registry keys when necessary.
For most folk asking them to edit their registry is met with an appropriate amount of fear as mishandling it could do serious damage to your system. However, this does not mean that the average user cannot arm themselves against a lot of the malicious programs that are floating around out there and I have suggestions for three programs that every PC layman should keep on hand in order to combat many of the threats out there, and the best part is that all of them are available for free.
HiJackThis: HiJackThis is a program designed to generate a log file of your registry and file settings. While it does have a "fix" option most of what pops up is not infected with any virus, they're just common file types that CAN be infected. While it's not suggested to check and fix items in the log file unless you are intimately familiar with your computer and are certain one of your results is malware many computer help forums request a copy of the log so that they can analyze your registry to look for issues on your behalf and then make recommendations from that.
Malwarebytes Anti-Malware: It's true that there are many freeware programs designed at fighting Malware, most specifically Trojan Adware, in my experience Malwarebytes is the best option currently available as it tends to have a quicker turnaround time adding new worms and viruses than say Spybot and if your program doesn't know how to hunt down a specific Virus then it's not giving you what you need when you need it.
ComboFix: This last program is a little unusual in that its main focus isn't so much hidden programs. Its focus is in dismantling viral rootkits. Virus infected rootkits can cause normal programs to function wildly and force them to operate commands that you have not issued such as making your computer repeatedly ping itself until your CPUs are stalling your speed. Virus infected rootkits can also cause symptoms like causing jumps in web searches if you happen to Google search a term related to the virus so that you get ad pages instead of the link you expected.
While these options do not provide the only options to help users combat malicious programs from ravaging their machines they are free and easy to use and can vastly help most people who aren't that confident about their techno-savvy to keep their computers safer and healthier.
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