Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Virus in laptop, what to do?

I am very much ignorant when it comes to computers, but today my husband found that I have virus on my laptop He tells me it's an svchost.exe virus. He's tried everything to get rid of it but can't. Before I pay someone to help me, does anyone know a way to get rid of it?

Svchost.exe is not a virus. It's part of windows.
If you google it, it will explain what it does.
For virus checking I would recommend AVG free. Just download and install and it will do the rest.

Hope this has been helpful.

As above. That name is not a virus.

hi, i do not use windows (as i consider windows itself to be a virus!)

anyway, svchost.exe is used by windoze to serve other applications.
svchost.exe can be a virus because of the probability of some ten year old kid writing a script to inject .dll files into your svchost.exe

svchost.exe in theory is great as it helps your computer to run faster, but it is not so great when connecting to internet and so on because people can exploit the weaknesses.

http://www.microsoft.com/security/portal/Threat/Encyclopedia/Entry.aspx?Name=Worm%3aWin32%2fConficker.A

that link from microsoft shows an example of how a virus / worm can enter your svchost.exe - the same link will also give you a patch or update so your windows machine is secure... or as secure as microsoft want you to be. which is not secure at all...

sorry i cant help you in removing this! only thing i can suggest is reformat and reinstall (which is necessary many times for windows users)

if you want a trouble free computer that is virtually impossible to get a virus, try linux, - search google for ubuntu. its free.

I have had to take it to a repair man, it's going to take a couple of days to repair to the tune of abt £150. The virus was disguising itself as svchost.exe ( or something of that ilk, as I said I'm a bit ignorant when it comes to computer terminology!) But it's reproducing itself and I'm told would eventually have bollocksed my laptop completely, although that's not the words said by the repairman obviously. Each time I would shut it down the computer would try to update something which never happened and then upon switching it on the next day, I'd usually get a message that Windows could not start properly and I'd have to go through the rigamorole of about 15-20 minutes of it trying to correct whatever was wrong. My husband is a whizz with computer stuff and it completely baffled him to the point where he almost threw it because there was bugger all he could do to remove the virus.
Thanks for your answers (not that I understood any of them :), they would have had to have been read by husband who could have made sense of them) Anyway, I will be buying all kinds of malware and better virus protectors than McAfee when I get it back

I swear by AVAST, its free,,, and if you go to scan button and set it to "BOOT TIME" scan. and do a restart. and let it do its job. before windows boots up,,,,usually sorts nearly all problems,
i also use "Malware bytes, also free ...
doing regular scans really helps...........
hope this helps

£150!!!!!!! For a virus removal!!!!!! Ermmmm. Ok. Personally for that kinda price I would of coppied all my files on to a pen drive n bought myself a new 2TB HDD, and start afresh with a new install.

BTW, how did your husband come to realise that there was a virus on the laptop? Anti-virus scan? Task manager?

giving an unknown company or a stranger remote access to your pc could be seen as a high security risk...

£150 just to remove a virus?

for £150, i would have removed your virus, checked your pc for hidden malware, get your windows nicely with great looking curtains as well as giving extra memory in your pc if you need it... or a better or second hdd...

would have also installed linux (so when you start your pc you can choose to use windows or linux) and hopefully you would see the benefits of linux and finally ditch windoze.

£150 for just a virus removal seems so expensive!!!

You are paying AT LEAST three times too much for a virus removal.

If you're still in the States you could have posted it here, had it fixed and back for less than you're paying.

Yes I know it's expensive ( see not everything is cheap here in the good ole U S of A) He charges £50 just to look at it before he's even begun to fix the problem...it's the going rate here I'm afraid We have 'The Geek Squad' here which are a part of the Best Buy company, not sure if you have them yet in UK too, and for them to look at it would have cost even more. Unfortunately it would have cost a damn sight more to replace it.
So, I have to suck it up if I want a clean, virus free laptop

Well it began with me asking him to take a look at it because I kept getting odd messages upon booting it up, then I'd get the blue screen of death. I'd regularly run a full scan on it and nothing showed up, so whatever he anti virus scan he performed it showed there were 3 trojan viruses disguising themselves as something very similar to svchost.exe. As I said, he is a whizz with computers but it completely baffled him...couldn't do a system restore at all.
I would understand how I'd got it if I went to all kinds of pervy websites and such...but all I ever do is look at homes for sale, cars for sale and maybe do a few emails

Viru's are pretty easy to pick up from anywhere. Imagin ur standing in a room full of people with a cold. Every one sneezing, coughing... Just being ill. Ur in the middle of the room surrounded by everyone, and all you have as defence is a tissue.
I think that about sums up windows built in security quite well... A tissue.

Sorry about the mad metaphor, its quite early in the morning and I've had a lot of caffeine :-)

Viru's are pretty easy to pick up from anywhere. Imagin ur standing in a room full of people with a cold. Every one sneezing, coughing... Just being ill. Ur in the middle of the room surrounded by everyone, and all you have as defence is a tissue.
I think that about sums up windows built in security quite well... A tissue.

Sorry about the mad metaphor, its quite early in the morning and I've had a lot of caffeine :-)