Have you seen this screen?
If you have then you have a big problem and must be reading this post on another computer.
Depending on what country you are in the Interpol Virus will show a national police logo and title.
The whole idea is to instill fear that you have engaged in some terribly illegal activity, for which you could even go to prison for a long time. They say that they can stop this trouble if you pay them a certain amount of money, usually hundreds of dollars.
This scam takes a variety of names, but they all do the same thing. They hijack the functions of your machine and protect itself from being removed.
Symptoms
- The Interpol Virus screen appears after you logon to windows
- You cannot access Internet Explorer
- Task Manager cannot be displayed
- You cannot start the computer in safe mode.
- Almost anything you try to do just brings you back to this screen.
How Did This Happen?
In most cases it comes from a site that offers free streaming of movies or other software, but the virus is installed while you watch the movie.
Read more about it here, along with a couple of methods to remove it.
If you want to see how I removed it, keep reading below.
Removing Interpol Virus
A client of mine streamed movies from a “free” site, but boy did he pay. His computer was hijacked by this Interpol Virus.
However, I could not get past it using safe mode, and finally had to remove the drive and hook it to my utility desktop as a slave to clean it. I hooked it directly in a desktop. Not sure if a USB connection would accomplish the same thing.
Malwarebytes was used first and removed the virus. Please note that you will likely need to use “Perform Full Scan” for this to be effective. I then put the drive back in the computer and started it in safe mode.
It was cleaned then with Vipre Rescue which removed further virus locations, which may or may not have been related to the Interpol Virus.
After that a typical temporary file clean up and registry optimizing with CCleaner and it was good to go. I have used this 1, 2, 3 solution many times will consistently good results. These 3 programs in their free formats have solved a lot of problems for me over the years.
I returned his computer running fine.
If you find it a daunting task to do this yourself contact me at info@mypcsupport.ca and I’ll take care of it for you.
Remember to always use a good anti-virus and keep it up to date.
Do you have an interesting experience with this or any other viruses or related problems. Tell us about it below.