In the meantime, I wrote this guide a year or so ago and whilst it may not clear the latest most virulent viruses it's worth a try first anyway.
How to get rid of most viruses
FIRSTLY, if you get a screen saying you have viruses and the notification doesn’t appear to come
from your installed antivirus package, don’t click anywhere – just press and hold the power button
on the computer to turn it off – you will lose what work you had open, but you might have saved
yourself from a virus infection.
1) From a rebooted computer, If you can, open Internet Explorer (or Firefox, Google Chrome,
etc) and go to
Google 2) Google for “Malwarebytes Antimalware” and download the free version
3) Install and update Malwarebytes (if you choose “Run” when downloading in step 2 above,
you can just follow all the instructions and it should update and run Malwarebytes for you).
4) Instead of just running Malwarebytes straight away, you need to boot into Safe Mode with
Command Prompt. This is done by:
a. Restarting your PC and hitting the F8 key approx. once per second from the time you
see the Dell splash-screen. If you are successful, you will get a black & white text
window giving you options including the Safe Mode with Command Prompt you’re
after. If you’re unsuccessful, the PC will continue to boot into Windows (and you’ll
see the Windows splash-screen) – in this case, reboot and try again. If you have lots
of problems getting to this stage, call me.
b. Once you’re able to choose Safe Mode with Command Prompt, do so. This will give
you a ‘strange’ version of your Windows desktop (as the screen resolution etc will all
be ‘wrong’) – don’t panic!
c. When you are logged in in Safe Mode, there should be a black & white text box (the
Command Prompt) in the middle of the screen – at this prompt you need to type the
following commands:
• CD \Program Files (or CD \Program Files(x86) if you’re using a 64bit
computer)
• CD Malwarebytes Anti-Malware
• MBAM
d. The above (ignoring the bullet points and noting that there’s a space between “CD”
and the rest of the command, and that you press Enter at the end of each line)
should ensure you get a Malwarebytes window open up. At this point, you should
choose the options to run a Full Scan.
e. The Full Scan will take some time (maybe up to a couple of hours depending upon
the size and speed of your computer), at the end of which you’ll be presented with a
list of viruses and/or malware that it found. At this point, note down the virus
names you find (don’t worry about duplicates) and then choose the option to delete
all the malicious files.
f. Once this has completed, exit the program then type EXIT at the command prompt.
This should restart the computer (although if it doesn’t, then you may need to use
brute force and press & hold the power button to turn it off).
5) When all of this has completed, you *should* be left with a computer that’s either 100%
fixed, or about 95% fixed. I would suggest you try and run a quick scan from Malwarebytes
(without bothering with Safe Mode) to see whether it finds anything else (it shouldn’t).