How to Remove Trojan Horse Dialer.RQJ

The Trojan Horse Dialer.rqj virus is part of a family of "dialer" viruses that, most often, attempt to dial international telephone numbers through your modem, although sometimes they settle on simply inundating your computer with ads. However, through the combined use of strong antivirus and anti-spyware software, you can usually root out and delete the infected files.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Steps

1. Download and install the free version of AVG AntiVirus (see Resources below). It typically finds viruses that other antivirus companies such as Symantec are slower to discover, costs you nothing and has been known to discover the Trojan Horse dialer.rqj. You will have to deactivate any other antivirus software before installing AVG to avoid system conflicts.

2. Go to "Start," "All Program," "AVG Free" and "AVG User Interface.
   Select the "Computer scanner" tab, then click on "Scan whole computer." The program will begin a system scan that will take about 20 minutes, depending on the size of your hard drive.

3. Download and install SpyBot Search & Destroy (see Resources below), a good anti-spyware utility, while you're waiting for AVG to finish the system scan.

4. Select the option to remove infected files (if any) once the AVG scan is finished.

5. Go to the "Start" menu, then "All Programs," then the "Spybot" folder, and then the "Spybot" program (with the magnifying glass icon). When the SpyBot window comes up, select "Check for Problems." It will perform another scan. If AVG failed to delete the Dialer.rqj virus, SpyBot may find it. When the scan has finished, if SpyBot has found the infections, select "Fix Selected Problems."

Tips & Warnings

• Though the above instructions will hopefully rid your computer of Dialer.rqj, you'll occasionally come across a virus that either won't be found by your anti-virus software or will fail to be deleted after numerous attempts. Your best option is to try a variety of different free software programs until one works. Aside from SpyBot and AVG, respected freeware programs include Ad-Aware, Avast Free Home Edition and HijackThis. Internet Explorer is well known for its security problems. If you use IE and keep having virus and spyware problems, either switch to a more secure browser such as Firefox or, in the Explorer window, go to Tools > Internet Options > Security and raise the Security Level to "High."

References

• DaniWeb
• AVG Virus Encyclopedia

Resources

• Download AVG Free
• Download SpyBot Search & Destroy