How to remove Skype worm from infected PCs
While Skype’s security workers are still trying to figure out how to eradicate a new worm that is spreading through the company’s instant messenger client, infected Skype users need to know how to remove the worm from their PCs.
A statement made recently by Kurt Sauer, Skype’s chief security officer, said that ”Skype has been in contact with the leading anti-virus software companies about this worm, and we know that they are updating their software to effectively stop this worm, as well as its side effects,” it appears that anti-virus software companies are still developing solutions for the removal of the worm.
Sauer added that “We would like to encourage our users to ensure that they are running anti-virus software on their computers and to download the latest anti-virus updates to provide the best protection against this and other viruses.”
Anti-virus companies up to this writing have issued no official word if their anti-virus products are now ready remove the Skype worm.
While waiting for the anti-virus companies to come up with a handy solution to remove the worm, Skype blogger Villu Arak told Voipnews that advance Windows users can remove the worm manually, by following the procedure below.
- Restart the PC in safe mode
- Run regedit
- Go to HKLM/software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/runonce
find entry with mshtmldat32.exe. Delete this entry. - Go to Windows\System32 directory and delete following files: wndrivs32.exe, mshtmldat32.exe, winlgcvers.exe, sdrivew32.exe
- Go to windows/system32/drivers/etc
- Find file hosts
- Open it with notepad, ctrl+a and delete all
entries (this will resume your antivirus updates),
save, close. - Restart the PC.
It is very important to remove the worm as early as possible, since infected PCs are actively sending malicious chat messages to other Skype users to further spread the worm presence. The longer the worm will be remove, the harder it can be eliminated from Skype network.
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