The most common of emergency calls in the technical world are the result of virus’. Unfortunately, there is not just 1 answer to the problem but, many.
Some large companies have been working in the field of designing anti-virus programs since the mid 1980′s and yet, they all seem to miss 1 or 2 virus that a competing product can find. To make matters worse, the competitor can’t find 1 or 2 virus’ that the others can, as well.
In order for an anti-virus program to be proactive in protecting your system, it has to be designed with an hueristics engine (the ability to guess that any given thing might be a virus). The aggressive ability to protect you, also prevents you from using multiple anti-virus programs; they see eachother as virus’ themselves.
There are some mild exceptions to relieve our growing heart burn. We often use a combination of AVG, Malware Bytes, Ad-Aware, Highjackthis and ERD before we resort to format and reinstallation of everything.
AVG is a great stand alone Anti-Virus with a resident shield that runs a scan on all files while you work and examines those incoming from your e-mail, web browser and other locations. In order to enhance your safety, we suggest Malware Bytes. Malware Bytes does not employ a resident shield, so it doesn’t fight with AVG (as it might be described when most anti-virus’ are used together). Ad-Aware does employ a resident shield however, in our experience, it has never complained when used in conjunction with AVG. Ad-Aware seems to address threats as they specifically arrive during your browsing experience, it will catch some virus’ but, that’s not it’s main function (catching pop up advertisements and other browser assaults). Hijackthis should only ever be used by a trained professional. It’s a simple program that allows you to see what has changed since the default installation of Windows and forceably delete those items. If you do not know the operating system inside and out… You could be facing the reinstallation of Windows as a result of using this powerful but, dangerous tool. ERD is old now, it’s not even made in the fashion we use it anymore. ERD is a boot disk that loads up to a windows desktop for data recovery and other functions, most simply, for manually deleting virus’. You can find an updated version from Microsoft called MDART. If you allow Windows to start when you’re infected, most likely, it will mean the virus has started as well and running programs can’t be deleted. Using ERD, we boot from a CD instead of the C: drive so the virus remains dormant for us to delete, unimpeded.
Even with all of these measures, we still run into the odd virus that requires some special attention but, formatting and losing all of your data is no longer an issue and infection rates are fewer and far between!
Anti-virus Tools
Panda On-line Scan. It showed some of my legitemate files to be virus’. Not system files but, some of my games collection. If you know what you don’t want it to delete, it should be an acceptable addition to your protection programs.
AVG Free Download. Free version has auto-protect and Anti-Rootkit among other helpful features. It is my main AV of choice.
Malware Bytes Download. Free version does not have an auto-protect feature so it doesn’t interfere with AVG. I even found a recommendation somewhere on AVG’s support forums to download this in order to augment AVG’s protection.
Hijack This Provides ability to forcibly remove files, registry entries and browser settings. Warning!!! This can allow you to delete Windows system files; It should only be used by a trained professional.
Ad-Aware Download (seems to work side by side with AVG without error).
Spybot S&D A link to the real program, watch out for web sites that claim to be the home of an an actual anti-virus producer as they are going to ask for money or infect you with virus instead of your desired intention. I mention this specifically for Spybot as the fake company for this 1 actually has a more reasonably named domain name than the legitamate owners of the software rights. http://www.safer-networking.org is the real domain name. The bad guys use http://sd-me.com/ Every link on the later home page leads to “join.html” without clicking it, I can safely assume it’s going to ask for a credit card then redirect you to download the software from the real McCoy.
Kaspersky has a nice removal tool that uninstalls itself once it completes scanning and removing many common infections.
Sophos Free Security Scan. Still bench testing
We also employ a range of boot disk style utilities that allow us to manually delete virus’ before they load into Windows memory. Call us today for quick removal of your virus issues… 905-550-2908
Contact Us
iKen do IT
Mobile Technician
Cel: 905-550-2908
Fax: 206-350-0856
service@kenit.ca
kenforgie@hotmail.com Click the MSN icon for live chat
kenforgie@yahoo.com
138 Burcher Rd.
Ajax, ON
L1S 2R4