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roger_grimes
Columnist

How to kick out Windows malware for free

How-To
Feb 01, 20171 min
SecuritySmall and Medium BusinessWindows

Like it or not, your PC is susceptible to malware. These videos will teach you how to locate the bad stuff, then remove it from your system

No single antimalware engine can keep up with all the malware out there. But how about 57 of ’em?

In this video, you’ll learn how to download and run Windows Sysinternals Process Explorer to test all currently running executables on your Windows system against VirusTotal’s 57 antivirus engines, which together offer the best accuracy you can ever get (with a small percentage of false positives that are pretty easy to spot).

Neither the Sysinternals Process Explorer software nor the VirusTotal service costs a cent. The whole setup process will take you about five minutes, and the scan, which you can execute any time you like, takes less than a minute. Only malware in memory will be detected, but if you’re infected, very likely that malicious process will be running — and this easy method will sniff it out.

Now that you’ve found malware, how can you get rid of it?

Your best bet is to reformat, reset, or recover your PC to be absolutely sure you have eradicated the malware. But if you don’t want to go that far, you have other options: antivirus software, sysinternal functions, and even the trusty reboot/rescan. Here’s a walkthrough of each option.

roger_grimes
Columnist

Roger A. Grimes is a contributing editor. Roger holds more than 40 computer certifications and has authored ten books on computer security. He has been fighting malware and malicious hackers since 1987, beginning with disassembling early DOS viruses. He specializes in protecting host computers from hackers and malware, and consults to companies from the Fortune 100 to small businesses. A frequent industry speaker and educator, Roger currently works for KnowBe4 as the Data-Driven Defense Evangelist and is the author of Cryptography Apocalypse.

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