Emergency PC First-Aid Kit

Here are Claus's top-tier draft picks for free anti-virus and anti-malware applications.

Think of these as a Swiss Army knife or First Aid Kit for your Windows pc when something goes bad. I've posted more extensive lists on many of these areas, but these tend to be the tools that I use over and over again the most.

Copy these files onto a CD-R or USB stick and keep them handy. You never know when you might find them handy to have.

Anti-virus:
--AVG-Free
--Avast-Free
--AntiVir Personal Edition Classic
--Comodo Anti-Virus
--ClamWin

Anti-Virus-On-Demand Scanner
--McAfee Stinger

Anti-Rootkit Scanners
--Rootkit Revealer (Sysinternals)
--Blacklight (F-Secure)

Anti-Malware
--SpyBot Search and Destroy
--AdAwareSE
--Ewido Anti-Spyware
--Microsoft Windows Defender
--Merijn's HiJack This

--SpywareBlaster (more of a preventative)
--SpywareGuard (more of a preventative)

Misc. Support Tools
--ProcessExplorer (Sysinternals)
--not really an anti-spyware remover, but great tool to figure out what is running on your system!
--Autoruns (Sysinternals)
--a-squared HiJackFree
--LockedFile Wizard
--Unlocker

Firewalls
--Sunbelt Kerio Firewall
--Jetico
--Comodo
--ZoneAlarm

WinSock2 File Repair

Note: Sometimes using any of the anti-spyware apps to remove malware from a system can damage your ability to reach the internet/network as the malware may hook/modify the Winsock files (TCP/IP).

If you find that has happened, either of these two LSP fixxers may helP restore the LSP Winsock 2 file on your system--just be sure to have them downloaded and locally available:

--LSP-Fix
--WinsockXP Fix

(Ripped and cleaned up from a comment I posted over in the Techblog's Blog.)

--and yes, I hand-vectored that image using Inkscape. Turned out pretty nice I think.

See you in the skies,
--Claus