Just check them - although being fully firewalled, spywared, antivirused or whatever you call it, have just spend 1.5 hrs!!! on the phone to a BT chap in Delhi getting some infection taken off a pc that we thought was safe from that sort of cr@p which apparently might have killed us off (don’t all cheer please). At least it was a free call, or at least included in their phone bill .
We thought we were ok with a weekly “scan” - apparently not, check for daily updates (he said).
Sorry to all the computer whizzkid chap/esses out there, this is just a reminder to the rest of us.
I reinstalled everything, put in new memory, new antivirus software which is set to run so often that its annoying me and I still have something wrong.
Random programs shutting down for no apparent reason…other than a virus of course.
I will be calling on the expertise of a certain LBer very soon
How did you get your viruses? I got one this time last year when I downloaded an infected freeware programme which my up to date AV software didn’t detect. Turned out to be impossible to get rid of it using AV so I ended up having to erase my hard drive, reformat it and reinstall everything.
My anti virus updates every 10 minutes. Full online system, fully active for all downloads… Sophos, you know you need it.
Norton/Symantec are crap. Full Stop.
Best thing is to use a new hard drive for the PC install, they are around £50 for a decent size C:/ drive and then you can setup the old one in a USB case and scan it with fresh AV install and then remove data you need.
For some of the real nasty stuff you’ll need a root-kit revealer, there is one included in sysinternals.
To isolate and scan the system, then you can use UBCD4Win, you can customise the installation to include AV and Spyware scanning.
Mac’s aren’t safe from viruses either, had to clean two systems in the last year. The only reason that there aren’t more is simply due to the installed user base, it is too small for any major impact, so the virus writers simply don’t bother.
If you want a secure system, then use OpenVMS, not very friendly but the design philosophy was security from the ground up. Or don’t connect your computer to the internet and never install anything.
I recently got a virus called ‘System Tool’, got in with a bit torrent file. I had to reinstall windows to get rid of it, luckily managed to retrieve all my photos/music etc first. I was using AVG which clearly didn’t work. I now have mcafee total protection (sounds like a toothpaste!) and fingers crossed seems to be working so far.
Most av programs will miss trojans that hide in a file you download.I use MBAM on a weekly basis, along with Superantispyware.Avast for the AV functions - real-time scanning is excellent.
On my Ubuntu box, I do have avast but it doesn’t run in real time because the virus threat is minimal, along with all unix/linux based OS.It’s there for my peace of mind and I run it every month or so just to make sure…
They all go through phases, though, and the best free one at the minute seems to be Avast.
Norton’s corporate offerings are actually pretty good. The commercial ones just obviate the need for a virus by running off with all your resources.
Well, that and MS provided many many attack surfaces. It’s not the only reason, but it’s part of it.
'course, the best way to avoid viruses its to not rely on anti-virus software. Treat everything as suspicious and only trust that which you know you can trust.
I think the best antivirus software is Mcafee, the free ones are ok i guess but whenever i download something or go on a website with popups mcafee is here to block it all out, never use norton as they just open the door for virus’s and then tell you to upgrade to 360, it’s up to the user at the end of the day, but i’ve used Mcafee for 6 years now and never have a prob with it
We run McAfee everything here (in the firewall, mailbox, individual hosts, file servers) and a virus getting through it is hardly an exception.
Which doens’t really tell you much about how much of the bad stuff it catches. Just that it catches some of them.
McAfee SiteAdvisor is free in any case, isn’t it?
AVG clogs up the Windows system and slows down the processor speed ~ you can check how much of your processor is wasted just running the virus check to keep your Windows in tip-top condition. Its library file size is huge, although not quite as bulky as Kasperskylabs which really eats the processor alive.
Just saw this on the news too:
Happy Christmas to Windoze users! The season just gets better and better!
Now to scarper off to the dark side with my Mac OSX
I run Avira antivirus with Online armour. When online I use sandboxie which is a virtual computer, so if things start to go wrong you can just delete the v/com and its gone, also it quarantines anything you down load so you get the chance to check out your down load before it reaches your pc. After going online you can delete all the files you have looked at(windows doesn’t do to good a job). I also have a full copy of my hard drive which was made using Acronis true image, so should all else fail I can format the HD and reload every thing as it was at the last copy.
A computer geek (my cousin) did it for me and I think the answer is yes.
I think maybe I have a virus somewhere that my software isnt picking up.
It wouldnt be a bad thing to have it gone for a week again…I did loads of stuff the last time when I would otherwise have been wasting hours online! lol
Use to have AVG and spybot and never had any problems but then had Threatfire and PC tools Antivirus which is when I think the problems started up.
Now also got Avast but it didnt find anything on a full scan.
Kevsta…will be in touch next week
