Reading a HijackThis Log

[tobywuk]

I know that a HijackThis log shows all the currently running processes on a system.

How do you know what all the different things are? do you google them, or is it just read them and learn what is normal and what is not?

How do you get rid of unwanted processes? do you use the program, or do you go about it some other way like with an antivirus or spyware scanner?

 

[munkyeetr]

One way of telling what the processes are is by copying and pasting the contents of the Hijackthis log file into http://www.hijackthis.de and it will perform an analysis for you.

 

[Platinum]

One way of telling what the processes are is by copying and pasting the contents of the Hijackthis log file into http://www.hijackthis.de and it will perform an analysis for you.

Although this is true, I would not trust it. It does do a good job of analyzing and fixing the log, but it can leave things out. People get trained in this to answer your question. I was trained, but I haven't looked at a log in over a year so unless absolutely necessary I would not help. You can do a lot of damage to a system. Basically how I learned was a lot of practice, identifying which processes are good so when I see them I can skip over them. How to spot something bad (based on file name). It's complicated. I do use google though to help search the processes, but HJT doesn't always fix everything. There are some nasty things out there that you have no idea about, and are very difficult to remove. As a result we use various software that's been created for various purposes. Through the use of HJT to identify the baddies, and other programs to fix it, that's how you do it.

It's not easy though. Takes a lotttt of practice.