Home PC reinstall

It was about 2 months ago that I last reinstall my home PC, and yet just now, I just finished reinstalling it.

This time, it is not due to hardware problem anymore but my PC has spyware infection.

This is how it happened. As usual, I’m looking for crackz software that will illegally make the software that I’m using registered. Errrr. End of topic about using illegal software. Hehehe.

The latest crack that I download seems not to be to correct crack that I’m looking for. But curiosity kills. I have a feeling that this will be a virus, but hey… I have Norton Antivirus 2005 (NAV) running on my PC, and it has the latest virus signature.

As expected, as soon as I start to run the EXE file of the file claiming itself as a crack of the software, my NAV immediately detecting a series of other files that are trying to write itself to various places in my harddisk, and reported that the file is infected.

I have a grin, knowing that my anti virus will kill them all. But my grin won’t last that long, as my antivirus keeps popping up the windows telling more and more infected files are trying to inject into my system, and the status “delete failed” turns me into panic mode now. At last, my NAV crashed. What the…

My PC now keeps popping up Internet Explorer windows with lots and lots of advertisements, when finally, Windows give this disheartening bubble message.

I’m doomed.

Plan A
Try to install Microsoft AntiSpyware after that. Thanks for my legal copies of Windows that I have at my office PC where now Microsoft has this Windows Genuine Advantage software, that will validate that you are using a genuine copy of Windows before you can do Windows Update, and in my case download Microsoft AntiSpyware.

Scan my PC, and lots and lots of spyware detected. Delete those files, restart my PC. Damn. The spyware is still there.

Plan B
Downloaded Lavasoft Ad-Aware after that. Scan my PC, lots and lots of spyware found, clean them up. Shit. Ad-Aware reported that there is one DLL file cannot be removed.

Plan C
This is the last plan in my list, and is 100% guaranteed to work. The last resort is to reformat my PC. Not much trouble to reinstall my PC since I have 2 physical hard disk. The first one is for the OS and all the softwares to be installed, and the second hard disk is stricly for putting data, downloaded MP3, downloaded movies etc. There’s not much hassle of backing up all of my data too since all of them are in seperate hard disk.

And I just finished reinstalling my PC, and putting all the softwares that I frequently use. Really sleep now and thanks god it’s weekend.