"I couldn't get rid of Hitman Pro quick enough after the first scan.
I researched what it found and it's garbage. IMO.
It has always been a snake oil program and still is."
I totally disagree Dougie and I have been using it about a year now. It could be in my estimation now the best scanner out there because it is the only one other than Rogue Killer that finds Trojans and Rootkits. I really never ran across it before I had a few FBI Virus last year and I would have had to reformatted those pc's, none of which I had to do because you boot to "kickstarter" and any system will boot right into Hitman and then it's an easy 1,2,3 removal. It was the advent of Ransomware that made this such a valuable tool and if you guys don't know that, then you aren't finding the really bad Ransomware, the first of which was the FBI Virus. Originally when FBI came out you could boot to Safe Mode and then run RKill but not any more. They got smarter. I bet none of you have seen Crypto Locker either because there is no other tool to remove that because you cannot get past it or around it so when you see some of the real serious issues of today you will get it. Mbam against Cryptolocker? That's like David and Goliath so you better get enough Windows disks because when this stuff finally reaches you, you will be doing a lot of unnecessary reinstalls, believe me and wait till tyou see the fun that is Windows 8 with reinstalls. Seriously ask Dan or Gimbo Wed night. Any of you who see really serious Malware would never even try Malwarebytes any more, it is a second rate product imho.
I PM'd Pete to get in here because we need to square off this point and he can tell you about Emsisoft as well.
"How long do you spend on a badly infected computer before you suggest a reformat?
"
I have only done that 6 times in 13 years Dougie and the answer is way too long. I pride myself on being able to clean almost any pc.
The one I gave up on 3 weeks ago was just short of 3 hours. What usually tells me is when you start cleaning no matter how bad the pc is, it will usually start to get faster as you clean and uninstall scumware. Then about 2 hours out if it starts to slow down again all of a sudden, that is usually the sign to give up cleaning and start reformatting. Most of the techs I talk to on my Linkedin Forum and Tony D can tell you that, wipe and load after a half hour. Some of the highest paid ones don't even try to clean a pc but have the "wipe and load" down to a science and do it right way and claim to never lose anything in doing so. They use Acronis Universal restore as their main tool.
They claim and are probably right that no matter how much time it takes to clean the system, a new install will always run faster so they became pros at doing that perfectly.