Anti-virus in Action: W32.Alcra.F Virus Removal

The W32.Alcra.F virus is a substantial threat that can bog down your computer's processing speeds by a great deal, cause system-wide freezes and crashes, and allow many other types of malware to infect your computer. You should remove the virus as soon as possible.

About the W32.Alcra.F Virus

The W32.Alcra.F virus is obtained primarily through several different filing-sharing networks such as BearShare, Shareaza, Morpheus and LimeWire software. LimeWire is a file-sharing application that many people use to download and share music illegally. Developers of software like LimeWire will often poison the software or web-based applications with viruses as a way to be compensated for their time. If they can steal enough information from enough users, they can sell it on the black market for a mini fortune. It's a sneaky tactic, but it does happen relatively frequently with freeware – especially freeware that's mostly used for illegal activity.

Once the W32.Alcra.F virus is in your system, it does a few malicious things, but they are not that menacing by relative comparison. The main purpose of the virus is to create a backdoor to your computer that allows other viruses to be funneled into your system. This certainly weakens your computer's security and makes you much more vulnerable to all types of threats. The main side effect of this primary function is massively slowed run times.

Users with the W32.Alcra.F virus will notice drastic decreases in processing speeds. The effect is so great that a system will often freeze or crash because the virus is consuming too many resources while a user is trying to use other applications. This essentially renders the computer unusable. The virus also attempts to steal users' personal and financial information, but this functionality is limited with the W32.Alcra.F virus, at least compared to full-out spyware suites.

W32.Alcra.F Virus Removal

Removing the W32.Alcra.F virus manually is not easy because the names of the viral files are different on nearly every computer. There are also many viral files and duplicate viral files buried in several hard-to-find locations on your computer. This presents a challenge to those who are not tech savvy, but if you'd like to try removing the virus without software, here's what to do:

1. End the executable viral file by running Windows Task Manager. The file name will be a random string of numbers and characters with an exe file extension at the end. You just have to look for a suspicious file with random numbers and characters in the name.
2. Next, you'll need to delete any more suspicious, randomly named files in all the other locations of your computer, including your hard drive and local disk C. Again, manually finding these files is a real challenge, and you must be careful to not delete important, non-viral files by mistake.
3. Next, you'll need to delete the malicious registry entries made by the virus. Again, the names will vary and you just must look for something that seems odd.

If you are unable to find all of the viral files or think this process will be too consuming of your time, consider purchasing highly rated anti-virus software. The best ant-virus software like BitDefender, Kaspersky and Webroot are very capable of removing pre-existing infections like the W32.Alcra.F virus and can protect your computer from nearly all future threats.

At TopTenREVIEWS We Do the Research So You Don’t Have To.™