Spyware - Processes on how to remove & Laptop Infection story

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Ok so 2 weeks ago I received some mailware / spyware on my laptop which caused so much pain (cost - down for work). My computer runs a number of up-to-date software to prevent this, but sometimes its almost impossible. We have more than 1 firewall into the connections it connects to including a firewall on the computer for the network. on top of this the computer on a daily basis connects to the server AVG software and updates quickly. Also have Ad-aware pro for protection on the spyware side (the more security the better). Although this setup it was still able to get through the protection. The unfortunate event happened when i was working on my laptop early in the morning (while the updates were currently being downloaded and as soon as the definitions were updated it picked up the infection. My bad luck is that the infection was recorded as coming in only minutes before the definition was downloaded (haha I should have slept in 5 minutes early and I could had been fine as the definitions would had been updated before the infection happened). However the computer was able to be backed up. I had a lot of files on my computer I could not lose as some was important - like the photos of my family (my partner who i love and adore so much and my baby boy who love so much and he's so cute!). I was able to save them all :D! However 2 weeks of scans and rescans and rescans to ensure this was safe to connect again. Running software from the list below which is completely free to use: 1. Avast - a great virus scanner which can be used for free (this is a great software for home uses and I have spoken with IT Engineers and they all recommend this for home uses) - Free version available. 2. Ad-Aware - a great easy to use spyware software (free version available) 3. SpyBot - another great software for spyware searching and removal. This is a free software however it can conflict with the others so you have to uninstall other software before using this one (or use it first then remove it than install the other 2 - that's how i did it as the other 2 are in my believe better). After running these I also used the Node32 scanning service for free also to double check. I did this and found over 300 copies of the original spyware on my backed up data, all were removed and now completely clean (some files had to be removed but not photos! :D) Avast is a great software that if the infection cannot be removed on the startup of windows will do a complete scan and will remove them outside of windows (which was required for about 5 files in my data). I hope everyone can use this information to help them out if they have any problems, or feel free to contact me as i may be able to help you out! Cheers! DavesLaw