Hijack what?

Hijackthis

Hijackthis is a computer program. Despite what you may think upon hearing the name, it's not a virus, and it won't let someone else control your computer. Hijackthis scans every running process on your computer at the time it's run, and then gives you the option to stop it from running by deleting the files associated with it

That means that it's an extremely powerful diagnostic tool, but, in the hands of the inexperienced, it can spell death and doom. Delete a wrong entry and suddenly you'll find youself lacking some key functionality (a classmate of mine deleted an entry tied in to his built in fingerprint scanner and no more scanning)

But I'm getting a little off track. For those who don't understand what something like this can do for you (and those too lazy to run google searches) think of it like this: you've been getting pop ups like crazy when you browse the net, it takes 2-3 minutes after you log on to windows to load your desktop, and you're running low on disk space for seemingly no reason. You could download and run hijackthis, and use it's feature to scan as well as create a log file and then post that log file on a website such as this one. People who know all about this kind of stuff will scan the logs, and then post advice on what to do to clean up your systems

An important thing to keep in mind when dealing with sites like that is that they are free services, and will come with the disclaimer that if you accept their help, and something gets further damaged, they can't be held responsible. Something I've done when I used to ask for help on those sites is checked out whoever responded to me, checked to see how many other people they've helped, stuff like that

I wont go into detail on how to safely use hijackthis, as there are tons of variables, but this video offers a pretty good tutorial:



remember, if you don't know what you're doing when using this program, ask for help. There are so many sites that you could go to to get it...just google "hijackthis log help". Be polite, be courteous, be patient, and be descriptive, and you wont be dissapointed



PS: when I get my site up and hosted (haven't even come up with a domain yet) I eventually plan on making a forum for hijackthis logs, so if anyone with HJT experience wants to know when that's up and would like to help, keep your eye on this blog