Geek Squad and Viruses

[Will-Mun]

Hm... I stopped using AVG because McAfee was able to get rid of a HUGE virus that AVG wasn't able to even detect (The one where the virus hijacks your entire system, and tries to dupe you into buying a scanning program by telling you your systems loaded with malware, my brother let this virus get in my system, not me.)

But... AVG was always something I liked, apart from being free, it really did it's job... And I've been running an unregistered version of McAfee for a good month. But... Still, three scans even if they aren't the BEST, is three scans. I'll get AVG again just to make sure... But really? There isn't anything on my computer. I know my system.

UPDATE: Got AVG, ran the scan, not a thing.

[sld72382]

(The one where the virus hijacks your entire system, and tries to dupe you into buying a scanning program by telling you your systems loaded with malware, my brother let this virus get in my system, not me.)

In my experience, the only thing that gets rid of the fake popup is a tool called Smitfraudfix (siri.geekstogo.com). Too bad my call center does not let us use it anymore.

[Andara Bledin]

McAfee? Might as well not have run a virus scan at all. Same league as Norton, use a real scanner like AVG or Avast.

Actually, if you do your research, you will find that Norton is marginally more effective than AVG, Avast is a fair bit more effective than both of those, and Kaspersky (or the 'brown-wrapper' AOL Active Virus Shield that has Kaspersky under the hood) blows pretty much everything out of the water in terms of actual virus protection.

^-.-^

[LostMyMind]

No single Anti-virus program will catch all known viruses. Catching new ones before they become known (virus that aren't in the definition file) is more critical than detecting olds ones.

Personally, I don't have an active anti-virus protection. I scan for virus every once in a while. Always comes up empty.

[air914]

Well since we're on the topic of virus software...... is there a really good free one or do you have to buy one to get anything really good? Anyone have their favorites? I think I have Ad-Aware and it seems to have done a pretty good job.

[RichS]

Well since we're on the topic of virus software...... is there a really good free one or do you have to buy one to get anything really good? Anyone have their favorites? I think I have Ad-Aware and it seems to have done a pretty good job.

I use AVG Free for my main machine and my kids system, and it's been working fine.

I also use the free version of Avast for my WinXP Home partition on my laptop, and that's been pretty good also.

[Andara Bledin]

The AOL Active Virus Scan is free for personal use. That's what I'm running right now. It's easy to use and fairly unobtrusive.

An FYI for those who don't have active virus scanners: There are a lot of really nasty things out there that can hide from scanners once they're on a system, and also other things that can partially disable scanners. Some will actually make it so that you can't even visit anti-virus websites.

Other than virus scanning and firewall utilities, you've got the anti-spyware utilities, which include things like Ad-Aware, Spybot, and the like. It is usually a good idea to have several of these since none of them is close to completely effective, and there tends to be a lot of overlap. Have one active and then do regular scans with the others. Unlike anti-virus programs, anti-spyware programs tend to not interfere with each other.

And everybody should have the latest version of HijackThis on their system and a bookmark for at least one good forum that helps with dealing with HJT logs.

^-.-^

[Greenday]

I have the winlogon virus. It sucks, huge hairy ones. AVG didn't get rid of it. SUPERantispyware didn't get rid of it. Ad-Aware didn't get rid of it. At least using the combination of the three, I managed to get rid of the part that prevents my laptop from restarting. Now it just messes with my explorer bar and internet browsers. I'm thinking wiping my harddrive clean and reloading windows is easier. I've NEVER had so much trouble getting rid of a virus.

[detroitmotorcity]

There is nothing wrong with them offering services you may need. Just like a car repair shop letting you know you might need some other items fixed or replace. If they don't tell you they are not doing their job!

[technical.angel]

I have the winlogon virus. It sucks, huge hairy ones.

Greenday, toss a Hijackthis log in the tech help forum, and I'll see what I can do.

[Dreamstalker]

Well since we're on the topic of virus software...... is there a really good free one or do you have to buy one to get anything really good? Anyone have their favorites? I think I have Ad-Aware and it seems to have done a pretty good job.

I use a combo of AVG, Spybot SD, AVG antispyware (catches some things that Spybot doesn't and vice versa) and the PCTools firewall which seems to cover everything.

On that topic, anyone know of a free 3p firewall that works under Vista?

[Will-Mun]

There is nothing wrong with them offering services you may need. Just like a car repair shop letting you know you might need some other items fixed or replace. If they don't tell you they are not doing their job!

But heres the thing, I didn't need it, my computer is virus free. So I would be paying them over a hundred bucks for them to do nothing.

[trunks2k]

Well since we're on the topic of virus software...... is there a really good free one or do you have to buy one to get anything really good? Anyone have their favorites? I think I have Ad-Aware and it seems to have done a pretty good job.

just a note, Ad-Aware is not an anti-virus. Ad-Aware is an anti spyware program.

[sld72382]

just a note, Ad-Aware is not an anti-virus. Ad-Aware is an anti spyware program.

And a pretty shitty one at that, even the new 2007 edition isn't that good. There are much better free ones out there (SuperAntiSpyware, A-squared, AVG).

And the reason why I say it's shitty is because whenever a previous tech used it, I have to use another tool to actually get rid of the threat. For some reason it NEVER works against the tough spywares (most notably the fake "your computer is infected!" task tray icon).

[MadMike]

Some will actually make it so that you can't even visit anti-virus websites.

I had to fight with one of those awhile back for a friend. Since she was hundreds of miles away, we did it thru MSN Messenger and Remote Assistance. Since I couldn't get to any of the sites I needed to download the tools I needed, I had to download the files on my computer, and then do a file transfer to hers. I eventually got it cleaned, but it wasn't easy.