Getting Rid Of Unwanted Software With System Restore in Vista or Windows 7

Posted on: October 31st, 2009

I recently pieced together some information that could be very helpful for Vista or Windows 7 users. The method I figured out can eliminate the really hard-to-remove infections, fake antiviruses and the like. It does not work 100% of the time but this is something that doesn’t require a vast technical knowledge to do and so far it has been very successful.

This method uses the System Restore feature of Vista/Win7. This feature was part of Windows XP too but the last two Windows versions vastly improved its effectiveness. System Restore is a way of going back in time as far as system setup goes. The main purpose of it is to enable users to undo a bad update, or other adverse software changes. In XP it was aboute 50/50 chance that it would help but in Vista and Win7 it’s much more reliable.

Let’s say your computer got infected by this really annoying fake antivirus program that keeps bombarding you with alarming messages and wants you to buy it. Now, these are actually one of the hardest-to-remove programs. However you can probably restore your system to a date prior to the appearance of this unwanted program and eliminate it that way.

Here’s how you can do it:

- Restart your computer.

- As soon as the startup screen of the computer flashes, start tapping the F8 key. Press it at least once a second. The reason for that is that you have to hit the key at just the right moment (in about a 1 second long window of time) in order to make this work.

- If you are successful then you’ll get a menu in black and white. If you have the Windows logo coming up then it means you “missed the boat”. Wait until Windows loads in and then restart again and try again with the F8 key.

- From the menu select the top one that says “repair my computer” (to select it press the Enter key on the keyboard – the mouse does not work at that point). It will load in a recovery system. During the loading you’ll be asked which keyboard layout you want to use, the preselected “US” is a safe choice. The you’ll need to select your user name and enter the password, if any.

- Now you’ll get a better looking menu. And one of the menu options is “System Restore”. Here’s a picture of this in Vista.

VERY IMPORTANT: Do not experiment with anything else in this menu, unless you have everything on your hard drive backed up!

- When you click on “System Restore” you might not see anything for a minute or more, just be patient. Finally the System Restore Window will come up and will give you a choice to restore your system to an earlier point in time. If you need to go back more than 5 days then click on the checkmark in the bottom of the window to show those restore points as well.

- Follow the prompts and get the restore started. It might take a while. Make sure that it goes through without any interruptions!

- Once the System Restore went through then restart the computer.

The pesky software should be eliminated at that point. Make sure that your antivirus and other security software is up-to-date and your Windows security updates are downloaded and installed. I’d also recommend running thorough scans with Malwarebytes Antimalware and Spybot Search and Destroy, as well as with your updated antivirus – just to make sure that all traces of the infections is cleaned out.

In some cases this procedure does not work. Mainly when the System Restore function is turned off, so there are now restore points are created that could be used to go back to. But in the majority of the cases this could be a valuable tool to keep the computer running well.

One more note: the system restore process can make the files on the hard drive really fragmented. So after the restore is finished do a cleanup of temporary files (CCleaner) and then defragment it (MyDefrag). That will get the speed of loading files back to normal.

I hope this information will be useful for many people and save some frustration and money.