Please recommend the best "Anti Virus" (1 Viewer)

[Rob Gillespie]

No, but if you stop using IE to browse then your chances of picking anything up in the first place are dramatically reduced.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

I don't know about that. Kaspersky has products that cover most of the security needs. I just installed their Anti-virus version 6.0 and it is an amazing product. It has already stopped several viruses and it has given me warnings for several programs that weren't viruses, and were known to me (for instance, a great freeware program from Sysinternals.com called pskill that does just what its name suggests, kills processes - can be misused, but can also be a big help for me.)

The more I look at the Antivirus offerings out there, the more I like Kaspersky. Doesn't noticeably impact performance but works beautifully and unobtrusively in the background.

At work, we use a centrally managed F-Secure, and that is both good and bad. When it works, it works well, but too often it will slow the machine down to a crawl and just in general be a big pest.

Norton... don't even get me started. Virtually everything Symantec buys up, bloats up, and then publishes on their own gets mutilated in the bloating up phase when they norton-ify it. I wouldn't buy Norton stuff on a dare these days, with some exceptions like Partition Magic 8 (which they haven't yet managed to destroy since it's a new aquisition for them.)

In fact, if I were Peter Norton, I'd sue Symantec for putting his name on some of that crap they sell...

 

[Al.Anderson]

I also think the answer is no. Plus, the antivirus products all seem to work best when installed on a clean system.

If you are infected I recommend going to http://www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/index.html
That site helped me get a feel for what to do for viruses and malware. They will also help you in the forums. Eventually you will have to use Hijackthis, a great program to cut to the quick in getting rid of problems. Be aware though that it doesn't actually identify specific instances of viruses/malware - it identifies programs that use techniques that could cause problems. So if you are not on intimate terms with your PC, either get a friend who is over, or make use of their forum.

 

[MichaelBA]

Thanks for the link! I hope it will be helpful, even though it seems to talk mostly about "sleazy" hijacking. I guess they mean porn.

But my kid was clicking on some games through ads he found on a local radio station site and that's what slammed his computer with all these pop-ups and ad-ons. I guess threats exist from every corner.

 

[Rommel_L]

I assume your son uses IE and simple tweaks should prevent this...

 

[MichaelBA]

I don't know what those tweaks might be, unfortunately. I'm pretty uninformed about how all this stuff works or fails to work. I ran a few free things recommended above for the past few hours and I think MAYBE it might have done the trick.

Ah, I should have paid attention in that BASIC class in high school circa 1982!

Edit: What I used didn't work -- completely, at any rate. Some things cleaned, others not. Still got to try some more!

 

[Bryan X]

Try running AdAware and Spybot Search & Destroy in SAFE mode. To get into SAFE mode, reboot (or turn on) your computer, and when it says 'Starting Windows' hit the F8 key. When the list comes up, choose SAFE MODE and then once Windows loads, run each of the programs (not at the same time, of course).

 

[MichaelBA]

Safe Mode -- will do! I've never heard that suggested before. I've run Spybot and AdAware and they didn't help. But I never did it in Safe Mode, though. I hope that helps.

 

[mattCR]

You can always make a BART disc and scan from within it. http://www.nu2.nu/

 

[Rommel_L]

After doing this, open IE and do the following:
- Go to Tools > Internet Options > General tab. Delete all files and cookies from the Temporary Internet files.
- Go to Tools > Internet Options > Privacy tab. Click on Advanced. The following should have a check or dot beside it:

• Override automatic cookie handling.
• Accept First-party Cookies
• Block Third-party Cookies
• Always allow session cookies
• Click OK to close

- Download and install google bar. Activate it's pop-up blocker and you're good to go. This would eliminate 99% of your pop-up problems and the most pop-ups you're going to get is probably one.

If you got other toolbars (i.e. AOhelL, Yahoo), you can get rid of them thru Tools > Manage Add-ons.

 

[MichaelBA]

Rommel, thanks very much for the advice!

Matt, what's a BART disc?

 

[Bryan X]

Excellent advice, but I wouldn't install Google Toolbar to block pop-ups. Internet Explorer can do it. Installing Google Toolbar will just add an unecessary piece of software running on your system.

To enable the pop-up blocker in IE, look for Pop-Up Blocker under 'Tools' on the menu bar.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

BartPE or Barts Preinstalled Environment boot cd. The guy who set the whole thing up, Bart Lagerweij, likes to add his own name to stuff.

It's basically a way to create a bootable CD that runs a minimal but quite useful Windows XP directly from the CD, allowing you to completely bypass your installed version on the harddrive and run tools etc directly from the CD to clean the stuff off the harddrive. Can also be a great tool if your computer doesn't boot up right, etc.

If you have an XP CD, you can use that to create the boot disk free of charge and (probably) within the bounds of your software license assuming you just use the disc yourself on your own machine.

 

[TonyD]

link?

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

 

[Rob Gillespie]

True but IE is still a major security risk. If you want to avoid spyware and adware don't use IE, period.

 

[Kimmo Jaskari]

Opera + Privoxy is unbeatable when it comes to many things, including ad blocking and privacy protection. However, setting up Privoxy is, while by no means difficult, a tad fiddly.

 

[MichaelBA]

Again owning up to my ignorance, but here's what happened with my infected computer. I downloaded and ran both Spybot and Ad-Aware. Ran them again and again. And again and again. Just kept running them every couple of days for a week. After the first few tries I was disappointed that I was still getting pop-ups and stuff. But after doing this, just repeatedly running each one every few days, now everything seemed cleaned up. Not sure this is supposed to have worked thus, but it did.

Hoorah.

 

[Bryan X]

Great.