Someone gave computer with hundreds upon hundreds of instances of malware (not including cookies). It was so badly infected that two hours after the Windows 98 boot process started, the desktop still had not displayed. Getting rid of the malware took a lot of time start to finish, but not that much of my time as I mostly let assorted utilities run for hours on end. For example, after its initial detection scan, Spy Sweeper took hours to delete the malware it had found.
A few days later there was an article in the Washington Post about removing malware from a badly infected Windows 98 machine. The approach the author took to removing the malware was flawed and I was appalled that the author would, in effect, brag about his incompetence in writing the story. Thus this page. See my gripes regarding the Washington Post.
If you need to run a web browser from removable media (that is, a program that does not need to be installed on the hard disk) I know of two:
- On the low end, there is Off By One, a single, standalone EXE that supports all versions of Windows
- On the high end, John Haller has created a Portable Firefox. As of September 2005, the latest version was 1.0.6. Alternate link
Unbeknownst to me, the US Government put out a document on this same subject just days before I put up this page (Recovering from a Trojan Horse or Virus). These instructions are better.
Note: For some reason this page doesn't render perfectly in IE. Beats me why
