HijackThis

HijackThis is one of the most important weapons for fighting adware infections on your PC. This software doesn’t remove adware/spyware/virus infections itself but it does a very important job to assist in the removal process.

Initially the tool was created to fight spyware infections that ‘hijack’ web browser home pages. The spyware would change the default browser homepage to a malicious web site and sometimes would lock the setting or even revert it back after you change it again. Every time you then start the web browser it forces you to go straight the malicious web site.

HijackThis scans your computer’s registry and hard drive in the areas that can be abused by malicious software. The only problem with this is that these areas are also used by legitimate programs and so you have to be extremely careful before you remove anything!

How To Use HijackThis

This the main screen when you load the software. You have the option to scan the system and save the results in a logfile. This is handy as there are many forums out there that will let you upload the logfile so they can assist you in removing the infection. Click one of the two ’system scan’ buttons to continue.

HijackThis will then scan the system and then display the results. If you requested a log then that will popup too. The log will be saved in the folder where you ran HijackThis from and will be called hijackthis.log by default.

To delete from the scan results just tick the box next to the line you want to delete and click ‘fix checked’. You can check multiple lines if you wish to remove more than one line at a time. Always make sure you know what you are removing before you delete anything as the scan results display legitimate programs and registry entries which you may need to keep.

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