7 Tips to Remove Trojan Virus in Your Computer

If you are the average informed reader of current affairs in the Information Technology domain, you may have come across the term Trojan Virus often. There are many Trojan viruses circulating in the Internet these days, and information about Trojan viruses is the key to combating an attack on your computer by these viruses. Let us look at what the term Trojan Virus means and what it does your computer.

Like the Trojan Horse of yore, a Trojan virus always comes masquerading as something desirable - for example, several Trojan horses exist that appear to be tools that can speed up your computer or give you a better browsing experience. Once they are installed by an unwary user, they initiate some malicious activity on their own or install a Backdoor in your computer. As the term backdoor implies, it is a program using which a remote user can surreptitiously execute commands and programs on your computer. The attack is not confined to your computer alone - the remote user can use your computer to attack other computers. Trojan viruses usually create entries in the registry so that they are run at startup.

Here are some steps you could use to get rid of a resident Trojan virus from your computer:

1. Anti-Virus Scan - Most Trojans can be detected and removed by anti-virus software. But Trojan virus programs are capable of replicating the links if they detect a missing file. This happens because a Trojan creates a key in any entry in the registry that starts up automatically.

2. Msconfig Utility - If you find that the virus is still present, you could try Start->Run->Msconfig. You can look at entries in the startup tab and uncheck those that look unnecessary. Syestem.ini and boot.ini are places where virus files may be started up but it is advised not to edit these files manually.

3. Scan for Auto-running Programs - If the Trojan still exists, you may have to use a program to detect software that starts up automatically. Many such freeware programs are available. Once a list of programs that can autorun is created, you need to restart the computer.

4. Boot into Safe Mode -Safe Mode ensures that Windows starts with only basic and essential services. Using the utility you used in the previous step for scanning, remove the suspected Trojan viruses from the list so that they cannot startup and delete the files from the hard disk.

5. Edit Registry - It may be possible for some links to Trojans to exist still in the registry. Use Start->Run->Regedit to edit the registry.

6. Remove Trojans from Registry - Check HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\CurrentVersion\Run for any keys containing Trojan viruses and delete them.

7. Reboot In Normal Mode