Malware is nothing but the malicious software that harms your computer a big time. You could get malware into your computer from different sources such as a floppy drive, CD drive, pen drive, internet, and so on. Internet is arguably the most common means of getting the malware from. Most commonly known scams involve warning innocent users on the internet about a potential virus on their computer, and offering a free scan. The warning is then followed up by a few prompts to install free antivirus software. This is where the users get trapped and happen to install a mallware. To add to the misery, sometimes victims end up paying money for the harmful software.

Such malicious programs are called scareware. A study conducted by Microsoft has reported that scareware is installed on more than 4.4 million computers. Some of the known scareware programs are Personal antivirus, XP antivirus, DriveCleaner, RapidAntiVirus, Antivirus’09, and WiPC antivirus. You must be careful of such malware.

So how does one eradicate malware from the PC? If you have unfortunately installed a malware on your computer, it could take some work to get rid of it. Lets us discuss some of the ways to get rid of malware from your computer.

The first thing that you must always do is to take the back up of your critical and important files. Before you start any operations to get rid of malware, make sure you have a copy of your important data. You would not want to lose out on your important data as a result of Malware Removal. You may take a backup on a flash USB drive, Floppy drive (if sufficient), or on a CD drive.

Many people tend to install an anti malware software to clean up an infected computer. This is certainly not the best of options. The malicious software (malware) is smart enough to defend itself. This is not to say that the anti malware software is not a good thing to install. However, it must be installed on a clean computer to protect it from any threats in future. As is famously said, virus programmers generally outsmart the anti virus programmers.

An alternative is to install and run an anti malware software in safe mode. Once in safe mode, the computer would not allow the malware or any other programs to perform any independent operations. This will allow you to use your anti malware program to scan and clean up the computer. The sad part is that sometimes your OS may also be infected with malware. In such cases, the safe mode will not help the cause either.

One of the finest ways to get rid of a malware is to disconnect your hard disk and connect it as data (non-booting) drive on another clean system. The clean system should already have an anti malware software installed.  This will help you remove the malware from the hard disk. You could connect the hard disk on a few clean and anti malware installed computers (different anti malware on each PC). No anti malware software is perfect. So, scanning with a few of them can ensure the best results. This option is definitely tedious but the best one.

In case it does not harm you, formatting the hard disk is the finest option. The format option will clean up anything and everything on the hard disk. You can then install a fresh copy of OS on your system.

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