HijackthisHiJackThis

Trend Micro HijackThis (HJT) is a free utility that generates an in depth report of registry and file settings from your computer. HijackThis makes no separation between safe and unsafe settings in its scan results giving you the ability to selectively remove items from your machine. In addition to this scan and remove capability HijackThis comes with several tools useful in manually removing malware from a computer.

Using HijackThis

To analyze your computer, start HijackThis and run a scan. See the Quick Start Guide [link to Quick Start, FAQs and Feedback] for help in running a scan. HijackThis will display a list of areas on your computer that might have been changed by spyware. Do not change any settings if you are unsure of what to do. There are many popular support forums on the web that provide free technical assistance by using HijackThis log files to diagnose an infected computer.

Not an expert? Just save the HijackThis report and let a friend with more troubleshooting experience take a look. A large community of users participates in online forums, where experts help interpret HijackThis scan results to clean up infected computers.

Log Analysis

Analyzing your HiJackThis log takes practice and know-how. Maybe it is best to let an expert check it out. However there have been numerous online log anaylzers. Some of which have come and gone. I can not vouch for these links or the accuracy of the information they provide, but you can submit your log online here for electronic analysis.
www.hijackthis.de/ or www.hjt.networktechs.com

HiJackThis is commonly used as a scanning tool in a lot of malware fixes. I recommend always having the latest version on hand, preferably kept on a USB key for when you’ll need it.