Welcome to Merijn.nu

Older news is kept archived here. Knock yourself out. :)

Lately a lot of people have been asking me what HijackThis is and how it got onto their system. I've answered this question so often now and pointed people to the relevant answer on my FAQ so many times, that I'm adding it here on the front page:

HijackThis is a free antispyware program for computer experts. If you paid for HijackThis, you were either scammed or sold something else. HijackThis does not automatically remove bad things, you need to decide for yourself what is good or bad in the scan results. If you want an automated antispyware program, get Spybot Search & Destroy.

If you found HijackThis on your system and you did not put it there, someone else did. HijackThis is not automatically installed, ever. If you recently brought your computer in for repairs or upgrading or fixing, or someone helped you clean up the computer of malware, most likely they installed HijackThis and forgot to remove it. BestBuy's Geeksquad uses HijackThis, and most likely more computer shops do.

If the entry in the Add/Remove Software list is not working, the person who installed HijackThis on your system did not remove it correctly. Old versions of HijackThis (1.9x and older) can be removed by running this Registry script.

I no longer own, maintain or support HijackThis. In March 2007, I sold HijackThis to TrendMicro. This includes the complete rights, the source code and customer support. I can no longer help you with error messages in HijackThis, bugs or missing features. If you use an older version of HijackThis, upgrade. If you find a bug, contact TrendMicro.

Thanks for your understanding.