A keylogger is essentially a dangerous computer program intended to record every mouse movement and keystroke movement made by a user on the keyboard. Thus recorded data is saved or sent over the internet by the keylogger program to an already known remote host. Such a program runs silently in the PC’s background and uses a hardware device or software application that the user is completely unaware of. Some of the keylogger programs are highly advanced to capture all the computer activities and even take screenshots of whatever the information is on the screen. Further, these programs automatically start themselves as soon as the PC is turned on without requiring a user’s input at all.

How Dangerous can a keylogger be?

A keylogger can be extremely dangerous as it logs all your key input movements on the keyboard. You might be doing Net banking to send/receive payments or forwarding confidential attachments to your office; all the personal or confidential information would be secretly passed over to the intended attacker who would further misuse it for stealing money from your bank account or leaking the confidential information out to other sources.

Before we go through the instructions to remove keylogger files, we need to understand what kind of files they are and how to identify them. A keylogger file can bear any extensions such as ".exe", ".dll", ".Pif", and ".scr" etc. The.exe files are the commonest type of files used to communicate keylogger programs. The .scr files are the most difficult files to detect than the .exe files.

Fix-it-all Solution

Below are the easy steps that should help you resolve the keylogger issues:

• Ensure that your PC is all up and running.

• Right click anywhere on your desktop’s taskbar, go to ‘Task Manager’.

• You can also press and hold ‘Ctrl’, ‘Alt’, and ‘Delete’ keys together on the keyboard to get to the ‘Task Manager’ window.

• When the ‘Task Manager’ window appears, click on the ‘Processes’ tab on the top.

• A list of all the running or hidden programs would be populated, identify the possible keylogger programs, if possible write it down and close the window.

• Then click on ‘Start’, go to ‘Control Panel’.

• A window containing multiple programs would be up in front, then click on ‘Add/Remove Programs’.

• Select the already identified program, click on ‘Change/Remove’ or just ‘Remove’ whatever option is there and follow the instructions to uninstall the program.

• Go back to the ‘Task Manager’ window and right click on the identified program.

• From the list of options, click on ‘Open Containing Folder’ and delete all the files associated with the identified program’s identity or name.

• Locate your hard drive (C:) with the help of ‘Windows search tool’.

• Search for all the files that resemble the same name as the keylogger program and remove all of them from the hard drive and the programs folder, make sure that you delete all the files of keylogger as they bear multiple identities.

• Ensure that the deletion process has completed and then restart your PC in order to let the changes take effect.

• When the PC is all up and running again, go to the ‘Start’ menu and then click on ‘Run’.

• In the ‘Run’ window, key in ‘regedit’ and press ‘OK’.

• The window will bring up all the registry entries of your PC, select the registry entries associated with the keylogger program and delete. (Most Imp: Before you go deleting the registry entries, you need to ensure that you have a backup of your entire registry directory. Deleting the important registry files would either prevent your PC from functioning properly or lead to a system crash.)

• After cleaning the registry directory, restart your PC.

• When again the PC is all up and running; recheck your ‘Task Manager’, startup configurations, and registry files in order to ensure that the keylogger program is completely removed from your PC.

The whole procedure demands the thorough knowledge of settings and registry files etc. in addition to patience. Though, it was the easiest process to resolve the keylogger program, if you still find yourself stuck with it then better contact a certified technical help and save your valuable time. There are a number of third-party service providers out there that provide online technical support services.