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Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

I hate to collapse the high level of discussion on HN all the way down to the least common denominator "my computer doesn't work" discussion, but ...

There is no such thing as cleaning your PC or removing the malware or removing the virus(es).

You reload the OS, from scratch, with non-OEM (that is, generic) OS media. Otherwise you will lose.

This has been true for 20 years and it only gets more true as OS software becomes more abstracted and tightly coupled to hardware.

Do not remove superfish. Do not "clean" your PC. In fact, don't even upgrade your OS from one major revision to the next. Wipe your system, install from generic media.

Tell everyone you know.

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I can see this NOT being an option for a lot of users—"Mom and Dad" types, people who travel, etc. Many would prefer nothing is done if it's an option between "full reinstall" and "live with the cert".

In this case Windows Defender and Lenovo's own tool remove the app + certificate. I think that's certainly "enough" as we're not dealing with malware which has trashed the system in other ways. Heck, they have to pay for a fresh copy of Windows first too.

TL;DR: "Clean install from a standard image" sounds like great advice on paper but it's not practicable for normal users.

> In this case Windows Defender and Lenovo's own tool remove the app + certificate. I think that's certainly "enough" as we're not dealing with malware which has trashed the system in other ways.

You don't know that for sure. Hence, reinstall. Also, why not use a Libre operating system? I've never had my GNU activation fail.

Because that's completely unreasonable and you know that.

I guess you never mistyped a Red Hat Enterprise Linux installation number before then.

You mean that monstrosity from RHEL 5? I'm so glad they got rid of that in RHEL 6.

> TL;DR: "Clean install from a standard image" sounds like great advice on paper but it's not practicable for normal users.

Ignoring sailfish for the moment: mom and dad types take their infected machines to other people.

Those people should know enough to know that malware removal is a con and that the quickest, most effective, way of cleaning the machine is a clean install of the OS.

This has been true for a very long time. It's weird to see malware tools recommended so often on HN.

That's ridiculous for a couple of reasons:

1. This is adware: sure it might not remove itself cleanly, but it doesn't have any mechanism to re-apply itself after being removed properly.

2. Malware can't magically re-apply itself when all its traces have been safely removed.

3. Reinstalling your OS is not a magic bullet, the image you're installing may also contain the same malware and there are even some viruses that will hide in your BIOS or storage firmware.

Reinstalling your OS is a "just-to-be-safe" measure when you are not sure whether you've removed all traces. But when there are proper tools available such as this one that removes all traces you are safe.

It is much more important to know what you're infected with and how to properly, than to have blind faith that reinstalling your OS will fix everything.

2: once they're run software on your machine it's not your machine anymore an you cannot know that you have removed all traces of the malware.

Re-installing your OS is not a "just to be safe" measure: it is quicker and more effective than using some malware removal tool.

Using malware removal tools and not reinstalling the OS is sleazy, especially if you charge money for it.

The issue is not necessarily superfish, but also any malware that could have infected your system by exploiting the bogus CA in the past few days. You don't know if you were infected, so to be 100% safe, a fresh install is the best option.

If you remove all the infection points of the malware, it's gone. Computers are not magic, and you rarely win by being superstitious with them. Most malware are as good as gone once they've been detected and removed by a decent antivirus.

I'm not saying this due to some marketing claims, but just by looking at the results from independent testing organisations like AV-Test (http://www.av-test.org/en/news/news-single-view/17-software-...) or av-comparatives (http://www.av-comparatives.org/removal-tests/).

Sure, where's the clean media and the license for that?

You usually can't install (non-OEM) Windows with the serial present on the sticker attached to the computer

http://www.howtogeek.com/186775/how-to-download-windows-7-8-...

Use the serial from the COA. Initial activation will fail, but when you perform telephone activation it succeeds.

>You reload the OS, from scratch, with non-OEM (that is, generic) OS media. Otherwise you will lose.

Good luck getting that from Lenovo.

> Good luck getting that

Just get it [1]:

> ...use the tool on this page to create your own installation media using either a USB flash drive or a DVD.

[1] http://windows.microsoft.com/en-AU/windows-8/create-reset-re...

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