# Sticky  Everyone MUST Read This BEFORE Posting for Help in This Forum



## Cookiegal

Before beginning the cleanup process, *it's very important that you back up all of your important data such as documents, photos, music, emails, etc.* to other media such as CDs or an external hard drive. An infected computer can be highly unstable and even a healthy one can crash and become unbootable at any time for a number of reasons so you should regularly back up anything that you wouldn't want to lose.

Also, many infections these days allow hackers to take control of your computer and obtain passwords and other sensitive information it may contain. With any infection, you should immediately change all passwords for logins, especially if you use your computer for banking and/or other types of financial transactions, but you must do so from a clean computer and not use the infected one for any such purposes.

Now you are ready to begin the cleanup process. Please follow the steps outlined below and include the requested information in your initial post.

Please provide a detailed description of the problems or symptoms you are experiencing along with any steps that you have already taken yourself, if any, before posting for assistance.

Download *Farbar Recovery Scan Tool *and save it to your *desktop. --> IMPORTANT*

*Note: *You need to run the version compatible with your system. If you are not sure which version applies to your system download both of them and try to run them. Only one of them will run on your system, that will be the right version.

If your antivirus software detects the tool as malicious, it’s safe to allow FRST to run. It is a *false-positive *detection.

If English is not your primary language, right click on FRST.exe/FRST64.exe and rename to FRSTEnglish.exe/FRST64English.exe

Double-click the *FRST* icon to run the tool. When the tool opens click* Yes* to disclaimer.
Press *Scan* button and wait for a while.
The scanner will produced two logs on your Desktop: *FRST.txt and Addition.txt.*
Please attach the content of these two logs in your next reply. If for any reason you can't attach a log, first zip it and then attach the zipped file.
Instructions on how to zip a file:

Locate the file or folder that you want to zip.
Press and hold (or right-click) the file or folder, select (or point to) *Send to*, and then select *Compressed (zipped) folder*. A new zipped folder with the same name is created in the same location.
Once you've posted the requested information please be patient and wait for assistance. Our qualified helpers are all volunteers who are very busy and they will try to get to you as soon as possible. If you haven't received a reply within 48 hours, you can add a post to your thread that will simply "bump" it back up to the top where it's more likely to be noticed.

*Other Important Notes:*

There are two types of "helpers" who are qualified and authorized to assist in the Virus & Other Malware Removal forum; *Malware Specialists* and *Malware Trainees*. Please note that Trainees are in training at other sites and work here under the supervision of their teaching experts as part of the learning process so all of their replies have to be approved by their teachers before they can be posted.

When you start a new thread in the Virus & Other Malware Removal forum, you will see the word "New:" to the left of your thread title. This indicates to the Specialists and Trainees that you are still awaiting assistance. The "New:" indicator will remain there, even if you reply back to your thread to add additional information or to bump it up after waiting at least 48 hours, until a Malware Specialist or Trainee replies. Once a "helper" starts working with you, they will change that indicator to read "In Progress:" so that other helpers will know that you are now receiving assistance. Please follow your helper's instructions carefully and provide any requested information or logs in a timely manner. Also, please do not edit your logs as the information is used to prepare a fix for you to run so editing the reports can have undesired results. If you need to add information or change something it's best to make a new reply as responders are not notified when edits to existing posts are made.

When the matter is solved then you should click on the "Mark Solved" button that appears on the upper left side so the indicator can be changed to read "Solved".

Threads will automatically close after 45 days of inactivity (meaning no further posts have been made).

*IMPORTANT NOTE REGARDING CORPORATE/COMPANY OWNED COMPUTERS

Please do not request assistance for corporate/company owned computers. Many changes/deletions are made during the cleanup process, some of which may involve uninstalling programs, deleting folders/files, changing settings and/or removing policies etc. As we have no way of knowing for sure if these are actually needed for company operations, malware issues in these cases should be handled by your own IT Departments in order to avoid any undesirable results. *


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