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has anyone had virus problems in the past?
im just curious as to how much of our community is tech adept at this kind of crap

im currently dealing with an extremely nasty late stage case of a rouge consrv.dll

I don't have a firewall.
Occasionally use Spybot: Search and Destroy but that's it.
Que sara, sara.

Joey wrote:I don't have a firewall.
Occasionally use Spybot: Search and Destroy but that's it.
Que sara, sara.

How can you not run a firewall??? Thats madness that is.



My virus dealing with experience extends to knowing how to nuke my hard drive. Thats all i need to know. A bit drastic yes. But it works like a charm. Unless of course the virus is embedded in your registry. In which case your stuffed. You aint ever getting that blighter out of there unless you go digging around for him and you know... balls to that.
My actual advice though would be to go to this website.

www.bleepingcomputer.com

Its a great website with lots of tutorials on how to deal with virus of all sorts. The mods are helpful and will explain in detail. Only thing is they seem to be having server problems at the moment....

Never had a virus, altough my extreme usage of torrnet websites. First read the comments about things before you download..

Snrub wrote:

Joey wrote:I don't have a firewall.
Occasionally use Spybot: Search and Destroy but that's it.
Que sara, sara.

How can you not run a firewall??? Thats madness that is.

Yep, prevention is better than cure. I use the standard Windows Firewall, as a rule I dont like Micro$oft software, but the in house Firewall is very good.
For your anti virus its ok to go for a free one like AVG or Avira, still does the job. AVG is good but a memory hog, Avira gives you more functionality. Perhaps that is at a cost of less protection, perhaps not, but it works ok.
the third layer of your defence is a good spyware blocker, preferably two. I recommend AdAware and Spybot.
Fourth a registry repairer and cleaning tool, if your house is constantlyb being cleaned there is nowhere for bugs to lurk. I use Glarysoft Utilities.
http://www.glarysoft.com/products/utilities/glary-utilities/download/?ref=up

All the above are free.

thenoobbomb wrote: First read the comments about things before you download.

QFT.

I think this above all else has helped out, if the site looks dodgy it probably is, if it links you somewhere with a .ru extension or equivalent, that you didn't ask to go to, get out fast. If it opens up new windows without your consent, close them, and run spyware immediately, if it auto-downloads any file, delete it manually close your browser and check your history. Though I don't have to do this much as Firewalls do most of this for you, but I remember playing whack-a-mole with cascades of popups about ten years ago.

Oh and one last hint, change the colour of your windows toolbar, especially the close window X. You might get an image of a windows toolbar looking like you can close it which is actually the accept button. This is a difficult thing to do if your real X button is a xdifferent colour from standard. Mine is purple, so if a popup occurs and I still see a red X in the corner I smell a rat and close down the page though other means.

Firewall on router (hardware).
Stealthed ports
Anti-virus/mal/spyware out the wazoo.

I do tech support for my less than tech savvy friends on occasion - but I've been playing around with pcs since I was 15 (28 years ago).

I have AVG, I tried Sophos but that had so many false alerts it had to go. With Google Chrome I block adverts on web pages and that appears to cut down on the number of threats I've encountered. I generally avoid the less reputable sites but viruses can be present though the ads even on the best sites.

That said last time I had a virus that infected the machine it was a trojan which couldn't be accessed when Windows was running. I had to boot the machine up in DOS and manually find and delete the file.

So it's been a few years. I guess kids now would barely recognise DOS.

Spybot: Search and Destroy. Run a scan weekly. BEST EVER. Can get rid of nearly anything.

I have Norton. It seems to do the job!

At home nothing in four years. Have a firewalled router, another firewall on my PC, active virus protection via Avast and Malware bytes and spybot to do occasional sweeps just in case.

I also don't go on the net with my admin account, run a restricted guest account that isn't allowed access to the main programs of the PC.


At work I had a fight with a nasty thing, (Windows 7 anti-malware 2012 or some such) about a week ago, as the IT department had forgotten to activate our virus protection program Sophos when they changed PC's back in November.
Doesn't help I often run IE at work as well so it was an accident waiting to happen. Took a number of walks home to get some programs on a USB and malwarebytes on the USB to sort the issue. Then got IT to start Sophos the next day.

Someone would think it might be handy for us to have access to simple things such as anti-virus programs, but they are all IT engineer only.

Windows firewall and that's pretty much it here, I don't download anything really and I rarely visit any dodgy sites.

Snrub wrote:

Joey wrote:I don't have a firewall.
Occasionally use Spybot: Search and Destroy but that's it.
Que sara, sara.

How can you not run a firewall??? Thats madness that is.

Firewalls' only purpose is to disrupt your gak and make it difficult to do simple things.
Anti-viruses are even worse.
Anyway, I'm on XP.

corpsesarefun wrote:Windows firewall and that's pretty much it here, I don't download anything really and I rarely visit any dodgy sites.

The thing I got on work was from a image share site I've been on before with no issues, banner hacked I'd reckon, just downloaded itself onto the PC, didn't even flag a response until it was there. Fortunately I knew when a program pops up suggesting its detected malware and I need to download something to protect myself, its time to shut the damn thing down via task manager and look for a fix.

Can't stand viruses.

I had to ban my roommates from my computer because of them

I had a few nasty ones. I just had to use restore disks,couldn't even do a restore to past point.

MSE+no room mates = no viruses for me

When first reading the title of this thread I thought it was about viral infections, not computer viruses. Had my hopes up.

I run a firewall, Avast and occasionally run a Malwarebytes scan. Works fine.

Router's firewall, turn off the other stuff. Just be smart about what you open and download. Run a scan with Malwarebytes every once in a while.

Got my first virus in 5 years of owning this computer (although you could argue that it's not even the same computer from 5 years ago).

Windows security essentials
Windows firewall
Spybot search and destroy

Solves anything that can be solved. Haven't had a virus/trojan/worm/anything in 7 years.

Also adblock and no-script with firefox. Your basically immune to everything known, and most everything not known.

I just use anti malware programs to handle any that get through my firewall. If one is for some reason a boot sector virus then I just load a previous installation of my OP and check that the virus didn't exist on that one. I just don't visit sites that my security flags up as having as negative activity and use common sence to avoid the rest. =/

Saying that who knows this old rig could be swarming with trojans right now and I wouldn't even know it. ^^

Nope. I stay off malicious sites and don't click phallic enlargement advertisements

I use AVG if I ever need an anti-virus though.

Samus_aran115 wrote:don't click phallic enlargement advertisements

Wait, you DON'T click those? But what if I feel insecure about my less-than-satisfactory tackle?

Joey wrote:

Snrub wrote:

Joey wrote:I don't have a firewall.
Occasionally use Spybot: Search and Destroy but that's it.
Que sara, sara.

How can you not run a firewall??? Thats madness that is.

Firewalls' only purpose is to disrupt your gak and make it difficult to do simple things.
Anti-viruses are even worse.
Anyway, I'm on XP.

Somewhat, the Windows one only stops things from coming in really. As a firewall itself it is rather basic, but adequate for home use.
I guess you could keep it up by fomatting every few months or so. Hopefully you don't do anything important on that computer like banking or online purchases.

I use Avast at home.

When people ask me to fix their PC's because they "know I'm real good with computers", I use Malwarebytes and then I install Avast. Finally, I ask them to come over and mop my floors, since I "know they're real good at mopping".

Whenever my computer begins to disobey me or act out of line, I treat it as any good dictator would treat dissidents.

I sent it to re-education. Brain wipe and re-program (reformat).

Just keep all media on a separate server, so that when I get a virus I can wipe it without worrying about losing much data.

I got this really bad virus once. I ferget the name of it, but what I remember was my computer had to get wiped and since then I've been far more paranoid about updating antivirus stuff and monitoring my computer usage.

My computer has the usual protections but my network printer is plugged directly into the internet with a static IP.
I can print from anywhere in the world and I get random messages from people as an added bonus.
I am thinking of getting a network enabled multi function devidce so people can scan my responses back.

I've been hit by the fake XP Security service virus 3-4 times in the past few years. I'm guessing its being served up by add running on websites normally safe sites. McCaffey/Norton does nothing to stop it. I've found that Malwarebytes does an excellent job of killing it.

Step 1 after buying a new computer and installing all your core software MAKE A RESTORE DISK/DISK IMAGE.

Step 1a Back up Data (your documents/photos/music/movies/porn) to two stores. I use an external hard drive and a second PC with a big HD in and for really important stuff I burn it on to DVD.

Step 2 when you get a virus on your computer hold the power button until it powers off; insert restore disk into the optical drive; and boot from it.

Hey presto no virus just a load of annoying MS updates (incidentally this works to put you computer back up to speed when it slows down due to crap accumulation)

Step 3 Make a new Image if you put new core software on it.

Also when building a computer keep it isolated until the antivirus and firewall are up and running. Try to install them from the latest version so they have the best protection when you first connect to the internet to update them. Once that's done make the image.

Don't put anything on it or do anything with it until that is done if you want to have the best chance for it.

Also make the operating system on it's own separate partition, do not store anything on this partition besides the operating system. To help with speed defragment the drive once a month.

Not all antivirus can pick up viruses either and if you really want to go for the best protection you want a stateful firewall (if I'm remembering correctly) and an antivirus with heuristics (it has a database but can also figure out what is a virus due to how it acts, the cheaper pretend ones will occasionally get confused though). These however are generally for business and can be expensive.

Keep a backup of all data you do not wish to lose, especially stuff on external drives. The backup exists to either be restored from or updated. Do not risk the backup by constantly messing with it.

RanTheCid wrote:McCaffey/Norton does nothing to stop it.

This accurately describes virtually any malware from the last 10 odd years.