If your computer is infected with a virus, it is imperative that you waste no time in removing it. This begins by identifying the virus; Google the symptoms or messages you are receiving to see if other users have experienced the same thing. You can also run an online scanner like Microsoft Safety Scanner. It may be worth running a scan using your anti-virus software, but by this point, with your machine already infected, it’s likely it won’t detect it.

To run a scan with Microsoft Safety Scanner webpage, download the scanner from the internet, and follow the instructions. If you can’t get online, try booting in safe mode with networking enabled. You can do this by pressing F8 on startup, and on the Advanced Boot Options screen, highlight ‘Safe Mode with Networking’. You can then attempt to identify the virus with Microsoft Safety Scanner and remove it.

Occasionally, a virus can only be removed manually, especially if it is well cloaked. Even if you find the filename, it could be difficult to delete, with cyber-criminals often using dummy files to hide the real ones. Once you have researched the virus and found out where it may live, run msconfig and identify the location.

Boot into safe mode by checking the box in the ‘boot’ tab in msconfig. Because you have booted in safe ode, the virus won’t be running. Next, find the virus by navigating the registry. If you unsure whether a file is malicious or not, right click the file and click modify. By putting a colon ‘:’ in front of the value data, the virus will be disabled on start-up and you can see the effect it has. Once you have found the virus, delete the registry entry. To be certain run CCleaner to scan the registry and fix any issues.