HijackThis is specially designed for removing spyware, trojans, viruses, and hijacks installed by various programs and often interfering with users' work. The program's logs are considered the information standard for many conferences related to computer security.
The program scans the main configuration files of Windows and the most important registry segments, displaying a full list of found keys and logs, some of which belong to viruses and malware. Keep in mind that some of them may be used both by spyware developers and by programmers of regular software. Therefore, you should not delete everything indiscriminately.
Using HijackThis:
- Download the HijackThis installer.
- Double-click the file to automatically install the program.
- Launch HijackThis. The main menu will open.
- To scan, click the Do a system scan only button.
- When the scan finishes, its result (log) will be displayed.
The HijackThis Log.
This is a list of lines, each of which identifies an important Windows setting. In front of each line there is a checkbox on the left; checking it allows you to delete that line. After that comes an identifier (e.g., R1), then the parameter name and its value.
The following buttons, the main ones:
- Save Log – saves the scan result to a log file;
- Fix Checked – removes the selected lines.
After analyzing the scan results or upon a specialist's recommendation, you need to remove unnecessary lines. To do this, launch HijackThis, scan the PC system (using the Do a system scan only function), check the boxes next to the lines you want to delete, and click Fix checked. The utility will ask you to confirm the action, click YES.
WARNING!
- When analyzing on your own, be careful, because you may change or delete important Windows settings, which could prevent the PC from booting or cause some programs to stop working.
- If you have run automatic spyware removal programs (for example, AdAware, Spybot), you need to restart the PC before launching HijackThis.
If it's difficult to analyze the log by yourself, visit an anti-spyware forum. Specialists with extensive experience in analyzing HijackThis logs will help you.
