Hey ResDcc - If your not already using these FREE utilities, trust me you should. They are the latest & greatest used by those computer geeks off the security forums:
Just this past week I spent close to 8 hours trying to clean/fix a hotel employees personal computer at the hotel I stay at while working during the week at the Kenosha Wisconsin Chrysler Engine Plant. This 32-bit Windows Vista system had over 120 viruses on it. I've seen computers with more before, but this system was screwed-up good. The viruses had disabled internet access from both IE and Firefox along with many antivirus programs that have to access the internet (Norton, F-Secure & Kaspersky) before they will install/run. The above anti-malware tools were very helpful but did not fix this computer. With the help of a web browser Safari from Apple www.apple.com/safari/download I was able to access the internet. Seems that the virus programmers didn't consider someone using this browser or it's too secure for them to block. In either case, everyone should download Safari as a back-up browser for their system. Moving on, I used Safari to download and run the online scanner from ESET/NOD32 www.eset.com/onlinescan and this fixed the computer. This online scanner from ESET does have a part that installs on your system and then accesses the internet to complete this online scan just like many other antivirus programs. Please note that just like Safari was able to access the internet around the viruses, ESET also was able to access the internet while the system was still infected. The other anti-virus programs I tried (Norton, F-Secure and Kaspersky) all were unable to access the internet around the viruses and therefore were all useless. When finished using ESET, both IE and Firefox would access the internet again along with all the other programs on the system. I hope someone finds this information I gained through all this hard work useful.
Maybe now that Microsoft Windows 7 is out and it seems to be a hit, maybe the virus programmers will continue to attack Microsoft OS's and stay away from Linux. I enjoy my CrunchBANG Linux and I find a simple & quick reinstall of the OS off the internal partition is the best anti-virus for me and my Linux machines.
It's clear Firefox for Windows has become so popular that it's as big of a target for virus attacks as Microsoft IE.
Last edited by BrianLaws on Thu Nov 12, 2009 11:32 am; edited 1 time in total
I will look into them. I have 3 programs I mainly use.
1st. Spybot Search and Destroy. I enable the Teatimer and do the full immunization.
2nd. Avast Antivirus. I have tried McAfee's, Nortons, AVG. They all have there pros and cons. I just like the way Avast is set up.
3rd. ZoneAlarm. Basic, Standard of firewalls.
They are all free, fairly easy to use. While using those, unless I went out of my way to get a virus, they have kept me safe. I wish Spybot was alittle more automatic in updates like Avast is, So it requires some user actions to keep yourself safe.
Anytime I work on someone system, I use the following programs.
CCcleaner. Great tool for cleaning out registry and old page files and stuff.
Hijackthis. Run this first before installing any virus or spyware. Its kinda old, but does the job.
Paragon Harddisk manager. Great program from general HD care. Runs outside of windows, so take some getting used to. But one of the best I have run across.
I mainly run Firefox now, and only rarely open up IE for certain sites that wont run Firefox (IDES anyone?). But i have noticed an increase in hits Avast is catching now. Like you said, Firefox has become a target.
But, I have found the best Anti virus, Anti spyware thing in the world. And its free!!! Its called a more informed computer user ;-p Amazing how well people can avoid virus's and stuff from just proper web surfing and searching IQ. Stay away from the obvious bad sites (Porn) and use some intelligent thinking on which search results you get. The only time I got nailed with a virus is when I was places I knew better to be at in the first place
I will give them a look over, I know the things I am used to and comfortable using are getting kinda dated.
What do you use for anti virus software? I was using Avast! for a while till i accidentally did a program update which updated me from 4.4 to 4.6
Ever since, it became a resource hog. In a given day it would accumulate up to 200,000 worth of virtual memory/PF usage. I had to go back to AVG but i did like Avast alot
...I know the things I am used to and comfortable using are getting kinda dated.
Yes, in the field of anti-spyware/anti-malware/anti-virus programs the leaders can change within a few months as you know. I wish that I would have tried using Avast on that computer so I could have seen how it fairs compared to Eset.
I did forget to mention that I also used CCleaner on that computer, it found problems but none of them fixed the computers real problems which were caused from viruses and not malware.
YourPonyDied - I don't use an anti-virus with my Linux system, I reformat off the partition often.
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Split: Sun Nov 01, 2009 1:57 am by BrianLaws
