i hate virus'

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daedalus__
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i hate virus'

Post by daedalus__ »

i just spent the hour and a half removing tons and tons of lame spyware and adware manually.

the damned thing added toolbars, made my desktop bg a webpage, disabled regedit, taskmanager, and cmd.

fortunately I was smarter than it (i hope)

anyone know a decent free anti-virus tool?

i would really like to make sure that i got it all
Roja
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Post by Roja »

AVG Free Edition is fairly decent.
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

i hate virus'
I love Linux :)

Seriously though, AVG is pretty solid.
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daedalus__
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Post by daedalus__ »

I only missed a couple of reg entries and one file.
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seodevhead
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Post by seodevhead »

I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable in the area of spyware and viruses. I have tried just about every AV/spyware scanner out there and have definitely seen the differences between them.

For Antivirus, you can't beat NOD32 for both detection/heuristics and removal. Norton (or symantec corp.), McAfee, PC-cillin, AVG, avast, antivir all can't shake a stick at NOD32. I have had dialers on my system that only NOD32 picked up.

For spyware, you are NOT going to beat Spyware Doctor. It is BAR NONE the most advanced and best detecting spyware scanner. Like I said above, I have used them all and spyware doctor continues to detect spyware that none of the other scanners will detect. And I am NOT talking about harmless cookies... I'm talking about trojan.downloaders, trojan.PWstealers, trojan.backdoors, etc. They update everyday and have been wonderful at detection and removal.

Bottom line, you won't get anything "good enough" for free. You have to buy NOD32 and Spyware Doctor to get good coverage, as things like AVG and Spybot S&D only act as icing on the cake.

Now as to why I get so many viruses and spyware... i'm clueless, especially since I don't visit 'bad' websites, open bad emails, etc. Very careful about that stuff.

But I will say this.. I'd still be using my computer thinking I was all clean if I didn't have NOD32 and Spyware Doctor. They have proven to me that probably 99% of the people out there who use computers have some sort of trojan, spyware, virus etc on their computer and don't even know it because they are using the "free" scanners or the sub par "subscription" scanners.

NOD32 and Spyware Doctor.
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Benjamin
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Post by Benjamin »

I don't use Antivirus software.
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JayBird
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Post by JayBird »

Gotta agree with the NOD32 suggestion
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

AdAware has helped me locate and quarantine issues in the past, although when my brother got smacked down by a nasty critter like what you metioned in the original post, it was time to wipe the slate clean, format the hard drive and start all over again.

His virus was a little bit of a nuisance in that it scanned the entire computer for it's known components every 30 seconds, and reinstalled itself (with new registry entries) when anything wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Norton got hosed, all the other apps got hosed, the File Manager app wouldn't work, some keys were disabled, regedit was removed, the entire 'My Documents' folder was password protected by the virus so we couldn't even get into it. That was a doozy.

PS I am so liking Linux.
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John Cartwright
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Post by John Cartwright »

Everah wrote:AdAware has helped me locate and quarantine issues in the past, although when my brother got smacked down by a nasty critter like what you metioned in the original post, it was time to wipe the slate clean, format the hard drive and start all over again.

His virus was a little bit of a nuisance in that it scanned the entire computer for it's known components every 30 seconds, and reinstalled itself (with new registry entries) when anything wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Norton got hosed, all the other apps got hosed, the File Manager app wouldn't work, some keys were disabled, regedit was removed, the entire 'My Documents' folder was password protected by the virus so we couldn't even get into it. That was a doozy.

PS I am so liking Linux.
Murphy! What the hell did you/he download?
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daedalus__
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Post by daedalus__ »

seodevhead wrote:I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable in the area of spyware and viruses. I have tried just about every AV/spyware scanner out there and have definitely seen the differences between them.

For Antivirus, you can't beat NOD32 for both detection/heuristics and removal. Norton (or symantec corp.), McAfee, PC-cillin, AVG, avast, antivir all can't shake a stick at NOD32. I have had dialers on my system that only NOD32 picked up.

For spyware, you are NOT going to beat Spyware Doctor. It is BAR NONE the most advanced and best detecting spyware scanner. Like I said above, I have used them all and spyware doctor continues to detect spyware that none of the other scanners will detect. And I am NOT talking about harmless cookies... I'm talking about trojan.downloaders, trojan.PWstealers, trojan.backdoors, etc. They update everyday and have been wonderful at detection and removal.

Bottom line, you won't get anything "good enough" for free. You have to buy NOD32 and Spyware Doctor to get good coverage, as things like AVG and Spybot S&D only act as icing on the cake.

Now as to why I get so many viruses and spyware... i'm clueless, especially since I don't visit 'bad' websites, open bad emails, etc. Very careful about that stuff.

But I will say this.. I'd still be using my computer thinking I was all clean if I didn't have NOD32 and Spyware Doctor. They have proven to me that probably 99% of the people out there who use computers have some sort of trojan, spyware, virus etc on their computer and don't even know it because they are using the "free" scanners or the sub par "subscription" scanners.

NOD32 and Spyware Doctor.
What do you think about CA eTrust?
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Jcart wrote:
Everah wrote:AdAware has helped me locate and quarantine issues in the past, although when my brother got smacked down by a nasty critter like what you metioned in the original post, it was time to wipe the slate clean, format the hard drive and start all over again.

His virus was a little bit of a nuisance in that it scanned the entire computer for it's known components every 30 seconds, and reinstalled itself (with new registry entries) when anything wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Norton got hosed, all the other apps got hosed, the File Manager app wouldn't work, some keys were disabled, regedit was removed, the entire 'My Documents' folder was password protected by the virus so we couldn't even get into it. That was a doozy.

PS I am so liking Linux.
Murphy! What the hell did you/he download?
He, not me. He calls me when he screws things up. In this case it was something about dancing boobs or god knows what. I know it had something to do with a porn site of some sort (gotta stay away from that stuff). All I know is I have never seen a program do that to a computer in my life. I didn't know you could write a program that locks you out of all of the folders on your system that you should normally have access to. It was insane. And that whole reinstall thing, man I was plexed trying to figure that bugger out. Finally, after about two hours of seeing an icon in the form of a dancing set of boobs pop back onto the desktop, I admitted defeat and told him to take it to a professional. The pros recommendation...

Clean the whole damn thing.
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John Cartwright
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Post by John Cartwright »

Thats a story to tell the kids, eh? :wink:
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hawleyjr
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Post by hawleyjr »

My anti-virus solution:

1. http://www.getfirefox.com
2. Zone Alarm Pro
3. Don't surf for p0rn :)
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Chris Corbyn
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Post by Chris Corbyn »

hawleyjr wrote:3. Don't surf for p0rn :)
Good luck on that one. That's incredibly difficult when everybody's gone out and you've got nothing else to do :P

For our under 18 year olds... number 3 is very naughty. Make sure you follow rule number 3 above :)
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neophyte
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Post by neophyte »

If your paying for anti-virus protection Panda is my fav.
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