I have just had to recover my husband's laptop after an attack by a virus that I believe is called Antivirus 2010 because it pretends to be an antivirus program, tells you that your system is infected (continously) and asks for payment. Is there any way that I could have removed it without a reformat? It would not allow me access to anything and MS Essentials didn't get rid of it.

I think this kind of virus resides in the registry of Windows. This means that even a real anti-virus have removed the program, it will come back after restart. My co-worker had this problem and the only solution we did was to reformat as well.

Sorry to inform you both, but yes there are ways. Malwarebytes software will remove it, and there is a free version. It doesn't update itself, and doesn't run real time but you can run it regularly by choice and just be sure to update it.

This program cleans your registry-and every computer user has the option to edit their own registry to remove stuff-its just risky if you don't know what you're doing.

Now the problem is not actually the registry here-its the system restore points. The most common of the rogue anti-virus programs will hide in a system restore, and so you have to turn that feature off to delete all restore points and then turn it back on only once you are clean.

I've cleaned this rogue program or its cousins (there are many variations in name of the same program) off three computers since Christmas. It is completely recoverable, but you do have to know what you are doing.

The first thing I tried when he got infected was to download Malwarebytes but the virus would not allow me to so I had no option but to reformat. I have made sure that it is now installed though!

I've never known about Malwarebytes or maybe I've not been researching the internet lately for good security products. Thanks for sharing that software and I hope it will do its job in preventing these malwares from coming in the computer.

Thanks for the info about Malwarebytes. That's great it has the free version. I often forget about the restore points. Do you mean to say that we have to turn the restore point feature off every time we run an anti virus software? What about the anti virus software that run real time?