Where this spyware removal service call was: Diversey and Ashland, Chicago

Paul’s computer was virtually crammed with spyware. He admitted that when it was time to renew his Norton Antivirus subscription, he thought that he didn’t needed that, so he uninstalled the antivirus protection.

Soon, spyware, viruses and malware were installing without asking on Paul’s laptop, displaying ads he didn’t want and popping internet explorer windows with even more unwanted advertising. He bought a McAfee subscription, but infested as it was, the antivirus couldn’t do nothing but to pop up notices with “virus detected”, adding more to the annoyance that it didn’t successfully manage to delete the viruses.

Here the situation got that bad that he needed to call a Chicago computer repair company that could save his computer.

When I arrived, the McAfee program wasn’t working anymore because of the security settings in Internet Explorer were just too high for Active Content or to download any files from the Internet.

That high level of spyware needed the Magic Boot CD That Cleans Spyware From Outside of Windows Environment (we’ll call it MBCDYCSFOoWE from now on :) ). The most used programs in our MBCDYCSFOoWE kit are command line antiviruses, adaware, Spybot Search and Destroy and some registry tweakers.

With that I managed to remove A LOT of the spyware from Paul’s laptop. Then, I booted into his Windows, installed Ad-aware and Spybot and Destroy, removed even some more spyware.

Of course, there are always some programs that you just can’t get rid of: for them there is a little gem called HijackThis that can remove Internet Explorer plugins and toolbars with just a few clicks.

After that, I just brushed through the programs startup list with msconfig and run a full computer scan with his McAfee antivirus.