Hello All, I have been checking out forums on here. I am curious about what Hijack this does and how it works? most of all what do you look for in the log afterwards? why do you run this program for anyway?
Please enlighten me thanks,


(Moderator edit: thread move to more appropriate forum. jgweed)

HijackThis examines certain key areas of the Registry and Hard Drive and lists their contents. These are areas which are used by both legitimate programmers and hijackers. It's up to you to decide what should be removed. Some items are perfectly fine. You should not remove them. Never remove everything. Doing that could leave you with missing items needed to run legitimate programs and add-ins. It does not target specific programs and URLs, only the methods used by hijackers to force you onto their sites. As a result, false positives are imminent, and unless you're sure about what you're doing, you always should consult with knowledgeable folks before deleting anything.

There is a good introductory BC tutorial that explains what HJT does and what some of the entries signify:

http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial42.html

Regards,
John

HijackThis is similar in some respects to a registry editor program. After scanning and creating a log, HJT relies on experts to interpret the log entries and determine what needs to be fixed.

HJT is not a cure all tool and just because you "fixed" something with it, that does not mean you have a clean system. The "Fix" button in HJT does not remove any malware but rather it removes the associated registry entry. So having HJT "Fix" listed entries in a log does not complete the cleaning process. There are specific files and folders which must be deleted afterwards. HJT does not delete them.