Clean that Trojan

Clean out that Trojan

Stay Calm!

Warning! Despite all of the good advice you find on this page, you may not be able to destroy the Trojan or at least trust your computer to be free of the Trojan. Sad to say, you may need to format your hard drive and re-install your operating system, applications and data. Did we mention backup?

Use your antivirus software or anti-Trojan software
First stop is your antvirus software. Make sure you have an antivirus software and make sure that is up-to-date. Although antivirus software normally recognizes many Trojans, it doesn't specialize in Trojans. Each antivirus software has a different success rate for Tojans. If your antivirus software fails to remove the Trojan, on to step two.

Although not well known, ant-Trojan software may have better luck with the less common Trojans. See our anti-Trojan software page for a list.

Removal tools
If you know what Tojan you have -- because your antivirus/anti-Trojan program identified it or you have been alerted to it through some other means, but your antivirus/anti-Trojan software can't remove it, you may need to do it yourself.
The following is a list of sites that provide removal tools for specific trojans. These may be special purpose utilities that were designed for one specific Trojan or they may be the instructions that you need to remove the Trojan manually. The following sites usually mix viruses and Trojans together so it is the same list used for viruses.

Symantec's Norton Antivirus Removal Tools
McAfee Virus Removal Tools
AVG's Virus removal utilities
Panda's Virus repair utilities
F-Secure's Virus removal tools

Why does antivirus/anti-Trojan software fail to detect or remove the Trojan?

the obvious -- it is out of date, the Trojan definition files are out of date, the Trojan is too new.
the Trojan is running as a process in Windows and its files are locked. The process will need to be stopped before the Trojan files can be deleted.
Windows ME and XP restore folder: Windows selectively backs up files to the restore folder. Infected files located here cannot be cleaned because they are locked. Here is how you handle this issue.

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