Tag Archives: files
How to Remove Keylogger From a PC Your Handy Support Guide
A keylogger is essentially a dangerous computer program intended to record every mouse movement and keystroke movement made by a user on the keyboard. Thus recorded data is saved or sent over the internet by the keylogger program to an already known remote host. Such a program runs silently in the PCs background and uses a hardware device or software application that the user is completely unaware of. Some of the keylogger programs are highly advanced to capture all the computer activities and even take screenshots of whatever the information is on the screen. Further, these programs automatically start themselves as soon as the PC is turned on without requiring a users input at all.
How Dangerous can a keylogger be?
A keylogger can be extremely dangerous as it logs all your key input movements on the keyboard. You might be doing Net banking to send/receive payments or forwarding confidential attachments to your office; all the personal or confidential information would be secretly passed over to the intended attacker who would further misuse it for stealing money from your bank account or leaking the confidential information out to other sources.
Before we go through the instructions to remove keylogger files, we need to understand what kind of files they are and how to identify them. A keylogger file can bear any extensions such as “.exe”, “.dll”, “.Pif”, and “.scr” etc. The.exe files are the commonest type of files used to communicate keylogger programs. The .scr files are the most difficult files to detect than the .exe files.
Fix-it-all Solution
Below are the easy steps that should help you resolve the keylogger issues:
Ensure that your PC is all up and running.
Right click anywhere on your desktops taskbar, go to Task Manager.
You can also press and hold Ctrl, Alt, and Delete keys together on the keyboard to get to the Task Manager window.
When the Task Manager window appears, click on the Processes tab on the top.
A list of all the running or hidden programs would be populated, identify the possible keylogger programs, if possible write it down and close the window.
Then click on Start, go to Control Panel.
A window containing multiple programs would be up in front, then click on Add/Remove Programs.
Select the already identified program, click on Change/Remove or just Remove whatever option is there and follow the instructions to uninstall the program.
Go back to the Task Manager window and right click on the identified program.
From the list of options, click on Open Containing Folder and delete all the files associated with the identified programs identity or name.
Locate your hard drive (C:) with the help of Windows search tool.
Search for all the files that resemble the same name as the keylogger program and remove all of them from the hard drive and the programs folder, make sure that you delete all the files of keylogger as they bear multiple identities.
Ensure that the deletion process has completed and then restart your PC in order to let the changes take effect.
When the PC is all up and running again, go to the Start menu and then click on Run.
In the Run window, key in regedit and press OK.
The window will bring up all the registry entries of your PC, select the registry entries associated with the keylogger program and delete. (Most Imp: Before you go deleting the registry entries, you need to ensure that you have a backup of your entire registry directory. Deleting the important registry files would either prevent your PC from functioning properly or lead to a system crash.)
After cleaning the registry directory, restart your PC.
When again the PC is all up and running; recheck your Task Manager, startup configurations, and registry files in order to ensure that the keylogger program is completely removed from your PC.
The whole procedure demands the thorough knowledge of settings and registry files etc. in addition to patience. Though, it was the easiest process to resolve the keylogger program, if you still find yourself stuck with it then better contact a certified technical help and save your valuable time. There are a number of third-party service providers out there that provide online technical support services.
How to Remove Keylogger From a PC Your Handy Support Guide
A keylogger is essentially a dangerous computer program intended to record every mouse movement and keystroke movement made by a user on the keyboard. Thus recorded data is saved or sent over the internet by the keylogger program to an already known remote host. Such a program runs silently in the PCs background and uses a hardware device or software application that the user is completely unaware of. Some of the keylogger programs are highly advanced to capture all the computer activities and even take screenshots of whatever the information is on the screen. Further, these programs automatically start themselves as soon as the PC is turned on without requiring a users input at all.
How Dangerous can a keylogger be?
A keylogger can be extremely dangerous as it logs all your key input movements on the keyboard. You might be doing Net banking to send/receive payments or forwarding confidential attachments to your office; all the personal or confidential information would be secretly passed over to the intended attacker who would further misuse it for stealing money from your bank account or leaking the confidential information out to other sources.
Before we go through the instructions to remove keylogger files, we need to understand what kind of files they are and how to identify them. A keylogger file can bear any extensions such as “.exe”, “.dll”, “.Pif”, and “.scr” etc. The.exe files are the commonest type of files used to communicate keylogger programs. The .scr files are the most difficult files to detect than the .exe files.
Fix-it-all Solution
Below are the easy steps that should help you resolve the keylogger issues:
Ensure that your PC is all up and running.
Right click anywhere on your desktops taskbar, go to Task Manager.
You can also press and hold Ctrl, Alt, and Delete keys together on the keyboard to get to the Task Manager window.
When the Task Manager window appears, click on the Processes tab on the top.
A list of all the running or hidden programs would be populated, identify the possible keylogger programs, if possible write it down and close the window.
Then click on Start, go to Control Panel.
A window containing multiple programs would be up in front, then click on Add/Remove Programs.
Select the already identified program, click on Change/Remove or just Remove whatever option is there and follow the instructions to uninstall the program.
Go back to the Task Manager window and right click on the identified program.
From the list of options, click on Open Containing Folder and delete all the files associated with the identified programs identity or name.
Locate your hard drive (C:) with the help of Windows search tool.
Search for all the files that resemble the same name as the keylogger program and remove all of them from the hard drive and the programs folder, make sure that you delete all the files of keylogger as they bear multiple identities.
Ensure that the deletion process has completed and then restart your PC in order to let the changes take effect.
When the PC is all up and running again, go to the Start menu and then click on Run.
In the Run window, key in regedit and press OK.
The window will bring up all the registry entries of your PC, select the registry entries associated with the keylogger program and delete. (Most Imp: Before you go deleting the registry entries, you need to ensure that you have a backup of your entire registry directory. Deleting the important registry files would either prevent your PC from functioning properly or lead to a system crash.)
After cleaning the registry directory, restart your PC.
When again the PC is all up and running; recheck your Task Manager, startup configurations, and registry files in order to ensure that the keylogger program is completely removed from your PC.
The whole procedure demands the thorough knowledge of settings and registry files etc. in addition to patience. Though, it was the easiest process to resolve the keylogger program, if you still find yourself stuck with it then better contact a certified technical help and save your valuable time. There are a number of third-party service providers out there that provide online technical support services.
Synchronize Files and Synchronize Folders with the Open Source Tool FreeFileSync
Now there are a lot of synchronization tools out there both paid and free, each with a different set of features and marketing spiel. What makes FreeFileSync stand out? It’s user-friendliness and performance. Both are buzz words already used so often that they almost lost their meaning. But still they describe best where FreeFileSync shines: Its user interfaces are stripped off from superfluous and needless options. Many similar tools seem to add every bell and whistle in a futile attempt to please each and every user, failing to realize they serve nobody in the end. FreeFileSync carefully selects only options that are relevant for backup and synchronization, while making tons of smart decisions under the hood. Most of these the user does not even notice unless he reads the long list of features that this tool supports.
Performance on the other hand is easily measurable. I have yet to find a tool which is faster than FreeFileSync, but there are a few tools specialized at high-performance file copying which seem equally fast. Using system logging tools like Process Monitor it becomes clear why: There is not a single superfluous file access during synchronization. There’s exactly one read access for each file during comparison and another one when synchronizing a file or folder. For a tool which is primarily I/O bound this is as good as it can get, but can rarely be expected when looking at other synchronization alternatives – no matter if free or commercial.
Besides these obvious features, there are more subtle characteristics that are easily overlooked. The FreeFileSync bug tracker has been empty or almost empty for years. This is not to say there were no bugs, but each of them was solved almost instantly within hours or a few days. This is quite remarkable for an open source software in general, and it does not even charge support fees. The release cycles have been around once per month for the past few years. This speaks for a modern agile software development process. Lastly with now five years of development it can be considered a mature and stable solution.
The first thing that you see when you start up FreeFileSync is a very well-arranged and structured user interface. It does not require much reading of documentation to figure out how to setup a synchronization task. You choose directories for left and right side, then compare them. This will fill the preview panel telling exactly what is going to happen before even touching your precious data. Now you can change the sync direction for individual files or select one of a number of synchronization variants. These are pre-configured rules that describe how you want your files and folders to be synchronized. The “mirror variant” for example will synchronize files and synchronize folders from left to right, making sure the target side is updated to reflect the source. Or you may want to select the “two way” variant where both sides are taken into consideration: Any change on one side is propagated to the other. If you have deleted a file, changed a file’s content or created a new file, this change will be synchronized to the other side, even if changes on both sides have occurred since last synchronization. Thereby the program is smart enough to detect conflicts, i.e. if you accidentally changed the same file on both sides, the program will warn and request a manual resolution. So the tool makes sure you do not lose important data, even if you make stupid mistakes.
FreeFileSync can be downloaded for free. Here is a list of the most important features taken from the project site:
– Detect moved and renamed files and folders
– Copy locked files (Volume Shadow Copy Service)
– Detect conflicts and propagate deletions
– Binary file comparison
– Full support for Symbolic Links
– Automate sync as a batch job
– Process multiple folder pairs
– Comprehensive and detailed error reporting
– Copy NTFS extended attributes (compressed, encrypted, sparse)
– Copy NTFS security permissions
– Support long path names greater than 260 characters
– Fail-safe file copy
– Cross-platform: Windows/Linux
– Expand environment variables like %USERPROFILE%
– Access variable drive letters by volume name (USB sticks)
– Native 64-bit support
– Keep versions of deleted/updated files
– Optimal sync sequence prevents disc space bottlenecks
– Full Unicode support
– Highly optimized performance
– Include/exclude files via filter
– Local and portable installation
– Handle daylight saving time changes on FAT/FAT32
– Use macros %time%, %date%, et al. for recurring backups
– Case sensitive synchronization
– Built-in locking serializes multiple jobs running against the same network share