NZFF

Last night my big bro managed to collect a virus(well he was on when it happened) We did everything we could to remove it(spybot, adaware, avg, norton 05, EVERYTHING) but it never went. In the end we decided to delete whats on the hard drive and start again...Was there any other way to remove it or is reinstalling windows the only way? For next time as we are bound to get another one when my bro goes"virus protection MUST be turned off as it slows down my online gaming!!!"
Thanks
James

I've managed to contract a couple of viruses over the course of PC ownership, but unless it's a really new virus, there is usually a fix for it. Either from Microsoft with a patch, or a even a file that will heal your pc from the likes of Nortons. Virus antidotes are often free for download from places like Nortons and McAfee. The first thing I always did was find out what the virus was, what it's name was, and search for an answer on Google. You'll not be the first person to get it, and there will no doubt be a huge knowledge base out there just waiting with an answer for how to get rid of it. If you can't find the name, describe the symptoms into google. Formatting the hard drive is so final..
I use and recommend http://www.avast.com/ . I've tried Nortons and McAfee and AVG. This one is light on the system, and picks up things even after McAfee thinks I'm clean. Maybe then your brother won't mind keeping it on. Oh yeah, it's also free.

Edit:
For example: Avast have a virus cleaning tool on their website. Free to download and gets rid of most of the major nasties to hit Windows.
http://www.avast.com/eng/avast-virus-cleaner.html

What was the 'Virus' and how did you know you had it? You would normally have to use a virus program in order to identify its existence and name of the virus, and if a program can give you that then it will normally be able to remove it.

Secondly, if it's something that happened when only he was on, then he must have obtained it and ran the program (which may have been infected) then. I would have first tried starting in safe mode, use System Restore to a time before he was on the PC, then turn off System Restore to remove all old restore points, then turn System Restore back on.

More info from you would help

How did I know:
Windows kept "detecting" it and popups would appear, A big X in the toolbar wouldn't go away. We kept geeting directed to sires, even with internet disconnected.(so it may have been something else, but we called it a virus) And norton kicked in and spotted lots of things, my brother wrote them down, they went(after the scans) but nothing changed.

My god I don't think a system restore was done.

It never crossed us to search it on google.
Thanks for the link, will get it and use it often.
Thanks for the help, I will keep this for future reference.
James

You're welcome James! Good on you for asking, I'm glad it will help if it happens again.

I had the same thing happen to me one time.
Every time I started the computer it would bring up an alert on the tool bar that I may have a virus.
When I clicked on the alert it would take me to a web site that was advertising a virus removal tool and a free check of the computer.
After running the free check it brought up a few files that could be effected but to remove them I had to buy the removal tool.
No other virus checker could fine anything.
The only way I could solve the problem was to go back to the web site, run the free checker and rite down all the problem files it found the go into the
regedit and manually delete the files one by one.
There were only three files to remove. one in the Auto startup which pointed to another to run the alert in the tool bar and when you clicked on the tool bar
alert it ran a file pointing to the web sit.
So in fact it was not a virus at all thats why the other checkers could not fine anything wrong.

that is your classic 'Adware' infestation... the old 'You have a virus'... click here to scan your system and "get" (read as: buy) a removal tool type stuff...

These things can be a REAL pain in the arse to remove... Spybot Search and Destroy, Ad-Aware, Hijack This etc. can help you locate and remove a lot of this stuff... but there are some things that have to be manually removed and its not easy... I spent 4 hours one afternoon trying to clean a comp as a reformat was not an option...

In the end I had to get some NTFS capable DOS utilities so I could boot off a CD and then manually delete files from the commandline...

unless you are very handy with computers, DOS, commandline utilities... its often just easier to reformat the machine and start from scratch.

Panda active scan is an online tool to help detect viruses on your machine, it comes in handy even if you just suspect your machine is acting a little weird. I have used it a few times and it will find anything that can harm your machine. You scan your machine using an online scanner.

http://www.pandasecurity.com/homeusers/solutions/activescan/

Housecall is another handy utillity for these type of issues.
http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

Has worked for me in the past, although some items still need to be removed by hand. There are plenty of tutorials on the internet on how to do this.
Hope this is of use.
Robert