I’ve just been infected by W32.Downadup.B — AKA Conficker — and have spent all night removing it, so now I’m going to share the quick way to remove W32.Downadup.B.

First, make sure you’re really infected with W32.Downadup.B. The surest sign is to go into My Computer and double-click your hard drive. If you get an error message about “RECYCLER\S,” then you’re infected with W32.Downadup.B.

There are a lot of sites out there showing you how to manually remove W32.Downadup.B/Conficker files. Most of the files listed have the word “[Random]” in them, meaning these W32.Downadup.B files could be named anything. Don’t bother trying to manually remove W32.Downadup.B with those instructions; you can waste a lot of time, and do more harm than good to your system.

To get rid of W32.Downadup.B, you have to use an antivirus/anti-spyware program; I just don’t see any other way around it.

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