The Virus Minefield
Posted on 30. Jan, 2009 by Mike Halsey in security
I’ve recently been trying to help a colleague clean some viruses off his PC. How many viruses he has installed is difficult to determine at this stage though it would appear he’s got all of them!
How has this situation come about. This is interesting as he’s been very wary of viruses but I discovered didn’t have any anti-virus or anti-spyware software installed, and he wasn’t aware of this.
The reason for this was that when Windows popped up warning messages for him, he didn’t want to click on them in case they were a virus! What he now has instead are trojans trying to convince him that he does have a PC loaded with viruses in order to get him to give up his credit card details on a website operated by fraudsters, to buy bogus anti-virus software.
With Windows 7, this situation has been rectified somewhat with a new and enhanced security centre. The rules however are quite simple.
- Make sure Windows Update is switched on and is downloading and installing new updates automatically
- Install Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware software, my recommendations are linked in the downloads tab on the menu (right)
- keep these software packages updated and run a full scan at least once a month with each
Don’t be afraid of the Windows warning shield (see above). It’s there to inform you if there is a problem. I can definitely see however where confusion might be caused and I’m glad that Windows 7 goes some way towards rectifying this.
it with others, or 
Yipcanjo
Feb 2nd, 2009
To be honest, I gave up on anti-virus software quite some time ago — atleast for my personal systems. It sounds a bit strange coming from a Sys Admin, I know, but the reduced system performance just didn’t seem worth it any longer. I still require anti-virus software on XP systems that I have in-house, but on Vista boxes I usually leave them as-is — complete with Defender and UAC active, but no anti-virus. Somewhat risky, I guess, but we haven’t had a virus outbreak in years. Literally. In fact, I’ve only seen one Vista box with a virus on it, and a mellow one at that. I will periodically run Housecall (housecall.antivirus.com) to see that things are still clean, but not having the real-time process has improved system response in many cases.
Or maybe my vision is clouded
Alpha
Feb 4th, 2009
Well gave up using anti-virus, firewall and all other kind of protection software about 2 years ago… and it really helped me improve my troubleshooting skills… Before deciding to loose the protection software I was using Zone alarm security suite (good protection, high usage of resources). Recently I have changed my mind about anti-virus protection and now using ESET’s NOD32… just anti-virus… and seems to keep out most of the nasty bugs out of my systems… and doesn’t really eat up resources either unless it finds a real threat… case in which it revs the processor to ~90%
and that’s a cue for me that it has a problem that can’t quite handle it for itself… so I have to put my troubleshooting skills to good use… NOD32 also managed to keep the bugs out of systems that I setup for “atomic” kids that go on “every” website and push “every” link they see… which are usually doomed to crash within the month…
Mike Halsey
Feb 4th, 2009
I’d never recommend that anyone disable or uninstall their anti-virus software whatever the reason. It’s a good safety net. Things are getting better though, with new packages chewing fewer system resources and not slowing your PC down. You can find my recommendations in the ‘downloads’ menu.
BodybuilderJason1982
Dec 15th, 2009
Thank you! I have been searching for this info all day now. My computer is not running like it should and I need to figure out how to fix it soon. I have bookmarked your post so others can find it to on delicious.