HijackThis examines certain key areas of the Registry and Hard Drive and lists their contents. These are areas which are used by both legitimate programmers and hijackers. It's up to you to decide what should be removed. Some items are perfectly fine. You should not remove them. Never remove everything. Doing that could leave you with missing items needed to run legitimate programs and add-ins. This Page will help you work with the Experts to clean up your system. For those of you needing instructions on how to Copy and Paste the contents of a text file into a Forum Post, please look at the Table of Contents. A link to the instructions is included.
Getting Started
If you have run and fixed anything with Spybot Search and Destroy , AdAware, or SUPERAntiSpyware, please reboot before scanning. I highly recommend SUPERAntiSpyware.
Also, make sure that you actually extract HijackThis to its own folder. DO NOT run it from within a zip manager (Winzip), as no backups will be saved.
This is what HijackThis looks like.
Do a system scan and save logfile - Will automatically Scan and save the logfile
Do a system scan only - Will automatically Scan, but not save a logfile
View the list of backups - You can view the backups that HijackThis has made
Open the Misc Tools Section - Will open Misc Tools Section
Open online HijackThis QuickStart - Will open the quickstart guide for HijackThis
None of the above, just start the progam - Will just start the program, you will be able to do what you want
Show this window when I start HijackThis - I recommend having this checked
Click on either Do a system scan and save logfile or Do a system scan only. If you click on Do a system scan only, the Scan Button has a new Caption. Save Log. Click the Save Log button to create a file named Hijackthis.log. A dialog box will pop up. Use it to select the location where you will save the log. Close the program. Return to the Forum and reply to your original post. Open the Log in Notepad. Highlight the entire contents. Copy and paste the contents of the HijackThis log into your post. Wait for help.
This is what HijackThis looks like after Scan.
Scan & fix stuff
Scan/Save log - Scan or save the log
Fix checked - Will fix the checked items
Info on selected item - Will give you detail on the selected item
AnalyzeThis - Will upload the logfile to TrendSecure
Main Menu - Will go back to the Main Menu
Other stuff
Info... - What the letters mean, command-line parameters, and version history
Config... - Configuration, Ignorelist, Backups, and Misc Tools
Added checked to ignorelist - Add checked item to the ignorelist
Once you have received advice on what should be removed, reopen HijackThis. Scan again. You have changed nothing and this scan result will be the same as the first. Place a checkmark in the box in front of each item you plan to remove. Then click Fix checked.
Config...
This is the Configuration screen.
Main - The main options of HijackThis
Ignorelist - This is the ignorelist of the checked items
Backups - Backups of HijackThis
Misc Tools - Misc Tools of HijackThis
The main thing you need to worry about in Misc Tools is StartupList.
StartupList
StartupList is a utility which creates a list of everything which starts up when you boot your computer plus a few other items. Click on Generate StartupList log, it creates a file named StartupList.txt and immediately opens this text file in Notepad. A StartupList will not be needed with every forum posting, but if it is needed it will be asked for, so please refrain from posting one unless asked.
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