removing malware from my dad’s computer
ugh, I was up late last night cleaning out my dad’s laptop. He recently mentioned to me that he had some problems with intrusive pop-up ads and such so I took the laptop home with me yesterday to see what was up. And just as I suspected, my dad’s computer had accumulated a nasty array of viruses and spyware. I’m not completely sure how it happened, but the internet security suite I bought for him last year was no where to be found on his hard drive. Since my father isn’t that computer savvy, he’s not certain if he deleted the program or if some malware had a hand in uninstalling it.
In any case, I had to scan the harddrive multiple times to get all the junk off his computer. After the cleanup, the computer kept on giving out error messages for missing .dll files related to some of the viruses. thankfully going through MSCONFIG and deactivating the related files in the registry did the trick for those errors.
I can’t believe his laptop was infected like that. What are my parents doing on the computer to end up with such malware?? must have something to do with all the korean videos that they watch so incessantly. They’re retired so as you can imagine, their daily routine involves going on the web to read up on the latest korean headlines and watch korean soaps. So it was imperative that I fix their laptop overnight so that I could get it back to them in the morning. It wouldn’t be right of me to deny the ol’ folks from their daily routine, now would it?
I’m the tech support person for my Dad’s PC. Luckily he hasn’t experienced viruses or malware (yet). But he does have issues that need ironing out. Good for you for helping him!
Incidentally, my fellow computing consultants and I swear by the free removal tool available at malwarebytes.org. Saved many a computer from the scourge of malware. Good luck!
thanks for the tip Kathy! I’ll be sure to check it out. hope you had a wonderful thanksgiving!
At least they’re tech savvy enough to use it for news and kdramas by themselves. That’s pretty impressive!
Hope the clean up went well and your parents can go back to their routine. Can you imagine, no computer! Ugh!
i know what you mean. my parents and in-laws keep getting viruses too!
@Kim – yup, through word of mouth with their friends, they know practically all about those korean websites to watch kdramas.
@Shirley – what would they do without us?