I’ve been reading some posts on here that say Hijack This is no longer very useful. Is this true and what should I use instead?
I would say it was not updated often but, it was still useful. Detects a lot of hijacked settings.
ComboFix would probably be the counterpart of HJT but ComboFix is pretty complicated.
First I don’t believe this tool should be use in isolation and I tend to have someone run MBAM and SAS first as they are likely to remove some of what may otherwise be reported by (or even hidden from) HiJackThis. Having run those I would say HJT is likely to be more accurate.
There are some that say you shouldn’t run other tools first but run HJT to try and get a handle on what might be wrong, some of those same people are now saying that HJT is not as effective, which kind of makes the point for first running other tools.
Because HJT it isn’t actively being developed since being bought out by Trend Micro, some malware will be able to hide from it, so it may well lose some of its use. However, it is still of use and a handy early step as that program doesn’t make any changes, just reports what it finds to be running.
If after running it there is apparently nothing untoward yet you still have malware style symptoms it is time to get out the bigger tools.