How to Remove Malware

Wondering how to remove malware? Depending on what type of malware you are infected with the removal process may be different.

What Malware Is

Malware, a term that means simply malicious software, can encompass a wide assortment of different types of malicious inclusions on your PC. Most of these will be sent out to your PC unknown to you. Malware can include true viruses, rootkit type virus software, Trojans, and adware. Adware tends to be some of the most difficult to detect and the hardest to remove.

Depending on what type of malware you are infected with the removal process will be different. How to remove malware is a question that every antivirus software and every computer user answers differently. The type of malware that infects your PC means the tool that will be used is different in some cases.

It is possible, if you know the kind and type of malware that you are infected with, to remove it manually. In many cases however, your best bet is going to be a malware removal tool that will permit you to identify the malware, as well as to remove it without the need to search your PC and determine every file which was affected.

How Malware Affects Your Computer

Malware in many of its forms does not affect one file alone. It tends to proliferate across your system and may affect the life, the usefulness, and the operations of thousands of files. To identify and fix the changes in each of those files is quite often impossible. This makes the question of how to remove malware most effectively difficult to answer. For those malware types that affect just one file, a simple deletion may be effective, but for those which affect thousands, you're likely not going to find or remove all of them manually.

Kind of Malware

Several great software tools do exist that answer the question of how to remove malware very effectively. Again, depending on the kind of malware, the tool will be unique.

Spyware-designed to infiltrate your PC and offer keystroke loggers, report data, and other information to a specific user, or to marketing professionals who sell it, spyware is not always easy to find. One tool that is free and open source, as well as ranked as the best among spyware removal is the Spybot Search and Destroy tool. It identifies about 95% of the spyware that will be found on your PC and sees to the effective removal of it.

Adware- Often one of the most difficult of the malware types to remove, adware can significantly slow the performance of your personal computer by literally eating up the bandwidth that you have available to you. Adaware is one tool that is an excellent adware removal tool. Another such adware removal is Malwarebytes which tends to find most of the adware that is on your PC and effectively get rid of it.

Rootkits, Virus Malware-These types of malware are often the most dangerous. While they are not always as difficult to remove as other types of malware, they can wreak the most havoc with your personal data. Malware of this type has multiple purposes, including assisting in identity theft, as well as to crash your PC, to log keystrokes, to send out other viruses to additional users, even to attach itself to your email and infect the computers of family and friends. Software programs such as full featured antivirus programs are best suited for this type malware removal.

These programs feature some of the names that you will know in the software business such as Norton, Kaspersky, Vipre, McAffee, Avast, and AVG. While several of these are free to the personal computer user, some are also for-pay software that require payment and registration.

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