Sometimes "Personal Security" isn't all it's cracked up to be

Sometimes Christmas brings unwanted visitors.  (And no, I'm not just talking about your obnoxious uncle.)

After a week's hiatus from work, my wife returned yesterday to find that, in her absence, her office computer had been infected by a particularly pernicious piece of malware called "Personal Security," which disguises itself as a virus protection package, but which is, in fact, anything but.  This little piece of software guano had crippled her computer so badly that she was unable to run any programs.

In conversations with her co-workers, she discovered that two of them had similar experiences on their home computers over Christmas, sort of the technological equivalent of finding a lump of coal in your stocking.

This made me think that there are probably others out there with similar experiences.  If you are among them, you may be interested in a solution.  Here is one method for scouring your computer of "Personal Security."

• Restart your computer
• As it's restarting, press F8 repeatedly to bring up the windows boot menu.  (If F8 brings up the computer's own boot menu first, just select "normal boot" or boot from hard drive.
• When the Windows boot menu comes up, select "Safe Mode with Networking"  This will allow you to start the computer without the malware running and will also allow you to connect to the Internet.
• Once you've connected to the Internet, go to download.cnet.com and download malwarebytes. (just click on the link.)
• Save the file to the desktop or anywhere else you can find it.
• Once the file has downloaded, double-click on it to install it.
• Once the install is complete, run the program and select the quick scan.  
• Once the scan is complete, instruct the program to fix all the problems it has found.
• When that's complete, restart your computer and allow it to boot in "normal" mode.

That should rid your computer of "Personal Security."