Tuesday, December 28, 2010

How to Remove Disk Doctor (Virus Removal Guide)?


In order to uninstall Disk Doctor you’ll need Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware tool

1. First and foremost you should print out the following instructions as you may be asked to close all open windows later on in the cleaning process.

2. You might encounter downloading issues if your computer is infected with Disk Doctor, so it’s possible you won’t be able to download anything on your own computer. If this is the case, you’ll need to download the specific files for the removal procedure on another computer and then transfer them using a CD/DVD, a flash drive or an external drive.

3. In order to proceed with the cleaning, you must first close any active processes that belong to Disk Doctor so they won’t interfere. You can do that by downloading RKill from this link. Remember to use the iExplore.exe download link, and save the program on your desktop.

4. Next, open the iExplore.exe file, and the program will begin to automatically close all processes associated with Disk Doctor and other Rogue programs as well. It’s important that you let RKill finish running, even if at some point it will display a message that RKill itself is an infection. Again, this is another fake message from Disk Doctor that might even stop the process and close RKill. In case this happens, the first method of tricking Disk Doctor is by not closing the warning window, instead leaving it on the screen and running RKill once more. If RKill still hasn’t managed to run all the way to the finish point, try running it a couple more times, until the malware is no longer running on your computer. If after all this, you still encounter problems in running RKill all the way, try downloading a renamed version of RKill here, which is in fact simply a renamed copy of RKill. After RKill will eventually finish its job, do not reboot you computer as the malware programs will pop out again.

5. After you get rid of all Disk Doctor associated processes, download Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware (MBAM) from the link provided above and, once again, save it on your Desktop.

6. After the download has finished, close all programs and windows on your computer (including this one).

7. Open the file mbam-setup.exe from your desktop to start installing MBAM on your computer.

8. In order to complete the installations you just need to follow the prompts and you must remember not to make any settings changes along the way. When the installation process finishes, keep in mind to leave both the Update Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and Launch Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware checked. After you hit the Finish button be very careful not to reboot your computer even if Malwarebytes’ asks you to.

9. After you finish the installation, MBAM will automatically start with a message that advises you to update the program before performing any scan. Once you hit the OK button a new window with the main program will appear as shown below:

10. On the Scanner tab choose Perform full scan and click the Scan button.

11. The scanning process can take quite a while, so be patient while you’re staring at a window like the one below:

12. When MBAM has finished scanning your computer, hit the OK button from the message window that will appear.

13. You’ll now be sent back to the main Scanner screen where you should select Show Results.

14. A window with all the malware that MBAM discovered will be seen, like the one provided below. You must now press the Remove Selected button and MBAM will start deleting all files and registry keys and will add them to the programs quarantine. MBAM might require you to reboot the computer at some point in order to remove some files and you must allow the program to do that.

15. When MBAM has finished removing the malware, a Notepad scan log will be displayed. After you close the Notepad Window, you can exit the MBAM program.

16. Disk Doctor should now be completely removed from your computer, but we strongly recommend that you also scan the computer for vulnerable programs (you can use Secunia PSI to that end), as many rogues and malware are installed through out-dated and vulnerable programs. Hope this guide turns out helpful. Please let us know if you successfully removed Disk Doctor.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.0 review

Panda Cloud Antivirus is a unique entry in the free antivirus race. Most free antivirus products still rely on signature updates to detect new malware, but Panda's program instead uses fresh data about malware direct from Panda's servers.
Panda Cloud Antivirus put up some excellent results in some malware detection tests, but its scan speeds were slower than we would have liked to see.
Installation and setup for Cloud Antivirus is simple and straightforward: You have to click through only one screen before it starts installing, though I found that it asked to install a browser toolbar.
Upon installation, it'll ask you whether you want to use the free or "pro" (paid) edition of Cloud Antivirus.
Panda Cloud Antivirus's main interface is really simple: The main window has only four tabs that run across the top, one for the status screen, plus tabs for the scanner, the scan report and the recycle bin (where neutralised files live, Cloud Antivirus lets you recover files in case it neutralises something you wanted to keep).
When you first open Cloud Antivirus, you are presented with a status indicator (a green checkmark if all is well, or a red X if something needs your attention) and a short description of your PC's protection status. The settings pane is equally simple, press the settings icon in the lower right corner to open it, but some of its wording could be more helpful.
Malware tests
While Panda Cloud Antivirus doesn't use signatures in the classic sense, it still aced our tests for traditional signature-based scanning and detection methods. It detected 99.8 percent of samples in this test, the highest score among the free antivirus products we looked at.
Cloud Antivirus 1.0 struggled some at blocking actual, live malware attacks from malicious websites or emails: It completely blocked 68 percent of attacks, one of the lower scores in this test, and partially blocked an additional 20 percent.
Note: Panda recently released Cloud Antivirus 1.3, which the company says should improve its blocking of such attacks. We don't yet have test results for the new version of Cloud Antivirus, but when we do we'll update this review.
When it came time to clean up infections, Panda Cloud Antivirus did a good, but not outstanding, job. It detected all test infections and was able to disinfect all active components of an infection 60 percent of the time. The free antivirus software we looked at removed 68 percent of active components, on average, and no product managed a cleanup rate of over 80 percent.
In addition, Cloud Antivirus removed all components of an infection, including Registry keys and other bits and pieces, 50 percent of the time, which was the best showing among the free products we looked at.
Scan speeds, though, lagged well behind the pack. Cloud Antivirus completed a manual (on-demand) scan of 4.5GB of files in 5 minutes and 10 seconds, the slowest time recorded in this test. It also fared poorly in on-access scan tests, which shows how well it can scan files as they're opened or saved to disk: It scanned 4.5GB of files in 5 minutes and 38 seconds, a mere three seconds ahead of the the last place finisher.
And although its impact on overall PC performance was fairly limited relative to other free antivirus products, Cloud Antivirus significantly slowed startup and shutdown times in our tests. It added over 11 seconds to startup time compared to a PC without antivirus software installed (the average free antivirus product added around 6 seconds to startup time), and over 17 seconds to shutdown time (the average antivirus product added around 13 seconds to shutdown time).