Note: First install some good Antivirus software and enable your Windows firewall. Also make regular updates for your system. If you don’t have this features installed and activated every additional Virus protection is useless. Here is few lifesaver tricks to help you additionally protect your working machine.

Disable automatic virus mail send from your system
You have already heard about viruses that send themselves to all your mail contacts form your Address Book in Outlook, Thunderbird or other mail client. A good way to prevent the execution of these self-virus mail send functions is to insert a new Address Book contact (New Contact) with the name”! 0000” – without quotes and without e-mail address. This contact will stand on top of the list and when a virus wants to send an email you will get the message “This message could not be sent. Please check your Address Book and make sure all of the recipients have valid e-mail addresses”. That’s it, simple and painless.

Primitive but effective virus protection
Important: This kind of protection is causing problems with program updates, so if you make regular updates avoid this step or you must roll back the all process before updating.

The next method is primitive but handy in many situations. Even if you have Antivirus software installed, new viruses are capable to find a way to change some program file in your system and when you need that program or file at most – you will find an error starting it.
Here is simple additional solution over your antivirus software. Go to Start/Search/ and find all your files with extension EXE or DLL. (Enter in search field “*.exe, *.dll” without quotes. Select all files, right mouse click and select read-only from your popup window, then click ok. From now on, the files .exe and .dll which are most targeted virus files can be read only so the viruses cannot change them.

Windows cannot find Rundll32.exe
If you get this message “Windows cannot find C:\Windows\Rundll32.exe, make sure You typed the name correctly and try again” is it possible you have virus infected OS. In that case:

1.Start command prompt – go to start/run enter cmd and press enter.
2.Insert your installation Windows CD disk (in this case Windows XP)
3.In command prompt window enter:

expand CD or DVD path\i386\rundll32.ex_%Systemroot%\rundll32.exe

and press enter. Note:CD or DVD path is your CD or DVD ROM letter for example E: or D: … and you must enter the correct path so the command can work.
4. After this, restart your computer

You are infected with Master Boot Viruses and cannot remove them
Note: don’t use FDISK /MBR unless you reserve it as a last step for virus cleaning. This command place “clean” partition code onto the master boot partition of your hard disk, and it does not necessarily change the partition information. But there is few cases if other OS or software use MBR – Linux Grub for example – so with mbr rewritten you will have to reinstall grub again. So, if there is now hope with other methods and antivirus software do it at your own risk because if something goes wrong you can lose data.

Restart your computer in MS-DOS mode and type:

fdisk/mbr

and press enter.

Restart your computer again and the MBR is clean.

That’s it. If any of this tips helps you in windows virus protection or if you have more tips to share, feel free to write a comment.

Tags | antivirus, Howto, Windows