Who do you blame?
I can never really decide where the bulk of the blame lands when it comes to malware and viruses on the windows platform. Of course, the authors of the viruses and malware suck, but after that how much blame lands on MS? Personally, I’ve had little trouble. When I have cleaned other machines it is always traceable down to a stupid “yes” click or shady install of some malware. #malware #viruses #microsoftwindows
My Malware/Virus removal toolbox *
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I always download from the original software vendor’s site to avoid fakes and add-on crapware. Here are some of my primary removal tools:
AdwCleaner, https://toolslib.net/downloads/viewdownload/1-adwcleaner/
MalwareBytes, https://www.malwarebytes.org/antimalware/
HitmanPro, http://www.surfright.nl/en/hitmanpro
HijackThis, https://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/
* The best way to be sure your system is clean is to reinstall the OS, but very few people want to do that out of the gate.
I always run a realtime virus scanner like ESET. You may want to try their free online scanner in a pinch http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/ . Your best defense is knowing the software’s source is safe before you click install. Microsoft Security Essentials seems to be pretty good too (and free) but I recently cleaned a machine that supposedly had it running. Of course, no virus software that I know of is going to protect you from manually installing bad software.