Tuesday, May 15, 2012

PSA: Rootkit Removal, Windows Defender Offline (free)

I have an old XP machine that I used to use to play Diablo 2 on, it is horribly infested with malware, free AV software was part of the problem from what I have been able to tell.

I tried a bunch of things to clean it, but wasn't sure it was clean so I stopped using it, with the Diablo 3 release I started thinking about it again.

Which led me to this free Malware removal tool that I didn't try on the XP machine, that is supposed to be good for removing rootkits & such http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/what-is-windows-defender-offline

If I felt halfway sure I got it clean there is data I would like to pull off of it, nothing critical, but some useful things.

I know, I should have it backed up but we are talking like maybe a dozen bookmarks that I could find again with couple days of work if I ever do need them, & some project Gutenberg books that I have on my Blackberry anyway but have been to lazy to download again on laptop or transfer from Blackberry to my laptop (I wish smartphones had USB 3!!!).

Anyway I though some of my readers would find this tool useful, you can put it on a DVD/USB and then boot with Windows Defender Offline, it will load ahead of the root kits during the boot from what I understand ( I am not a hard core computer nerd).

Hope that helps.

~Cliff


No comments:

Post a Comment