Best Free Spyware Removal Tools

I have been spe­cial­iz­ing in Spy­ware Removal for a few years, and I can cer­tainly say that both paid and free spy­ware removal tools have improved dramatically.

I am going to share the process that I use to remove spy­ware, and it usu­ally works about 60% — 70% of the time.

If this process does not work, I will usu­ally backup the impor­tant infor­ma­tion, do a zeros wipe on the com­plete hard drive, and finally for­mat and rein­stall Win­dows. In rare cases where for­mat­ting a hard drive and rein­stalling Win­dows is not an option, I have more advanced and time-consuming tools to remove spy­ware.

What free spy­ware removal tools will I need?

I strongly sug­gest down­load­ing these appli­ca­tions from a com­puter that has Inter­net access and load­ing them onto a flash drive, because spy­ware often cuts off Inter­net access or is smart enough to pre­vent access to the web pages you would need to down­load these tools.

If you have no other choice but to down­load onto the infected PC, try boot­ing into “Safe Mode” with Net­work­ing, first.

• Com­bofix, Rogue­fix and Smit­fraud­fix
• Mal­ware­bytes Free (The paid ver­sion has an active scan­ner that makes sure you do not get infected again).
• AVG Free (The paid ver­sion, AVG Inter­net Secu­rity, has an active spy­ware scan­ner, too).
• CCleaner
• Fix IE Utility
• XPQuick­Fix
• LSP-Fix

Let’s Get Into the Spy­ware Removal Process

The spy­ware removal process is not a fixed set of steps. Spy­ware is very smart, but all spy­ware has weak­nesses and I have laid the path of least resistance.

Per­son­ally I would try to down­load and run Mal­ware­bytes first. If it works you are very for­tu­nate, because most spy­ware pro­grams will rec­og­nize Mal­ware­bytes and pre­vent it from run­ning. You can try renam­ing the pro­grams and see if it works, oth­er­wise stick to the steps and you should suc­ceed. If you run into a snag, leave a com­ment, and I will help you

1. Log into your com­puter in “Safe Mode” and run CCleaner. This util­ity removes a lot of unnec­es­sary files, which allows the other util­i­ties you will be using to scan your com­puter faster, because the Tem­po­rary Inter­net Files, and etc. will be erased.
2. After run­ning CCleaner, log into the infected com­puter in “Safe Mode” then run the Smit­fraud­fix util­ity. This util­ity is designed to remove “fake” anti-spyware appli­ca­tions that uti­lize Tro­jans to issue fake taskbar secu­rity alerts, or that change your back­ground in order to scare you into pur­chas­ing the full com­mer­cial ver­sion of their software.
3. After run­ning the Smit­fraud­fix, log into the infected com­puter in “Safe Mode” and run the Rogue­fix and LSP­fix utilities.
4. After run­ning the Smit­fraud­fix and Rogue­fix util­i­ties, reboot the com­puter back into “Safe Mode” and run the Com­bofix util­ity. This util­ity will scan your com­puter for known mal­ware, and try to clean the infec­tions automatically.It is very com­pre­hen­sive and can detect and remove most major spy­ware pro­grams. This pro­gram takes about 30 min­utes to run and reboots the com­puter sev­eral times dur­ing the process. Go ahead and find some­thing else to do at this point because you will not be able to use your com­puter for other tasks while Com­bofix is running.
5. After the Com­bofix util­ity is fin­ished, run Mal­ware­bytes. This works sim­i­lar to Com­bofix, but is able to detect and remove many more dif­fer­ent spy­ware pro­grams. It also has a straight­for­ward tabbed inter­face. Mal­ware­bytes often require a reboot after com­ple­tion, so make sure you tell it to reboot after it is done remov­ing spyware.

   Hope­fully, you have a com­puter free of spy­ware at this point. You might still see parts of Win­dows bro­ken or out of place, so we will use some heal­ing util­i­ties to bring your com­puter back to normal.

6. Run the Fix IE util­ity and the XPQuick­Fix util­i­ties, which will fix a lot of back­ground prob­lems that spy­ware cre­ates once they infect your computer.
7. I know you prob­a­bly paid money for your Virus Pro­tec­tion, but you have been com­pro­mised so ditch it. Here are the removal appli­ca­tions for the pop­u­lar anti-virus pro­grams (McAfee, Nor­ton).Why remove these? Anti-Virus pro­grams aren’t any good once they have been com­pro­mised. But these two prob­a­bly weren’t good to begin with. Also you should expe­ri­ence a sig­nif­i­cant speed boost after switch­ing to a more effi­cient and sta­ble anti-virus program.
8. If you are broke, install AVG Free, if you have a few bucks get their com­pre­hen­sive solu­tion. I would also rec­om­mend sup­ple­ment­ing your anti-virus pro­gram with a real-time spy­ware scan­ner, such as Mal­ware­bytes, the paid version.

Keep your com­puter clean!

1. Again I rec­om­mend buy­ing AVG Inter­net Secu­rity and Mal­ware­bytes to com­pletely pro­tect against spy­ware, but if you go with the free Mal­ware­bytes you will be fine. I would rec­om­mend open­ing Mal­ware­bytes once a week and doing a scan to ensure the com­puter is clean.
2. Avoid porno­graphic sites, and free­bie sites (you know free music, soft­ware, games, etc).
3. If you stum­ble upon a sus­pected shady web site that forces you to answer a YES or NO popup, or an OK CANCEL popup that you did not ini­ti­ate, hold the Alt Key and press F4. This will ter­mi­nate your browser with­out answer­ing the ques­tion. If you click on an answer, 99% of the time you will give the site per­mis­sion to down­load rogue soft­ware onto your com­puter regard­less of the answer you choose.
4. Change browsers. Inter­net Explorer has many prob­lems, and ActiveX is a huge win­dow for com­put­ers to be infected with spy­ware. Switch to Opera, Mozilla Fire­fox, or Google Chrome.

Dis­claimer: This is an expla­na­tion of how I remove Spy­ware. I am shar­ing this with you to poten­tially save you a few bucks. When in doubt ask ques­tions, but do not blame or attempt to sue me if these pro­grams make things worse.

I would love to know if my instruc­tions helped you, so please give me some feedback.

Hav­ing prob­lems with the pro­ce­dures? Con­fused? Ran into some­thing not explained in the arti­cle? Post a com­ment and I will help you out.