The adware and spyware programs once installed keep creating entries and shortcuts in your Windows PC to make sure that it becomes very difficult to get rid of them. These malicious shortcuts may be present in the Start Menu or the Windows desktop among some other locations. You can scan your PC for the presence of these malicious shortcuts and remove them easily using two free tools Check Browsers LNK and ClearLNK.
The first tool Check Browsers LNK is used to scan your system drive (the partition on which Windows is installed) for the presence of malicious links. It scans for both the LNK and URL shortcuts and checks the target that these shortcuts point to. The tool has no GUI and it just creates a LOG file once the scanning is finished. You can open this LOG file in Windows Notepad and use it in the second tool.
The second tool ClearLNK makes use of the LOG file generated by the Check Browsers LNK. You have to copy-paste the LOG file into the space provided using the Paste from Clipboard button. You can also read the LOG file directly using the Open a log button. After this, you have to click on the Cure button.
The “curing” process goes through all the shortcuts found in the LOG file and depending on their nature takes a proper action. If the shortcuts have been modified by the malware, then it cleans those shortcuts. If the shortcuts are created by the malware, then it removes all such shortcuts. During the “curing” of the shortcuts, it can fix the icons of shortcuts, correct the browser object references in the shortcuts and delete the arguments from the shortcuts. At the end, you will see another LOG file created by CleanLNK.
Conclusion: ClearLNK makes it easy to fix the web shortcuts and links corrupted by the spyware, adware and other malware. It can be used in conjunction with Check Browsers LNK to scan the shortcuts and cure them.