My PC has effectively been taken over by Spy Marshal, which appeared a couple of days ago. How do I get rid of it? Jim Morrison
I'm not familiar with Spy Marshal, but there are lots of similar programs. Removing them generally involves running HiJackThis (which has been bought by Trend Micro), FixWareOut.exe and sometimes Siri's SmitFraud.exe. If you need help, there are plenty of forums that will talk you through the removal process. These include TechGuys, CastleCops and TomCoyote -- pick one from the list at http://www.merijn.org/forums.php. For examples of the process in action, see the Tech Support Guy and LockerGnome forums.
A site called 411-Spyware also offers Spy Marshal removal, but I can't see any reason to trust it.
Many rogue anti-spyware programs, such as SpyAxe and SpyFalcon, use the Zlob Trojan downloader and backdoor, which is dangerous. This is often bundled with video codec packages, as explained in an article on the Trend Micro site.
If you have not installed anything recently, make sure you have installed all the latest Windows updates. Also, switch to IE7 or Firefox.
