Agreed. I run Spybot S&D, Ad-aware, and Spywareblaster (all free) and have
been spyware/adware free for over a year. My Linksys firewall stops the
hacks, but my Trendmicro pc-cillin stops the virus and trojans. I've had
customers where Norton had to be uninstalled to get the PC to run right.
I've seen Norton cause more problems than it solves, and I've never seen it
pick up a trojan.
For peace of mind, visit www.trendmicro.com occasionally and perform their
free online scan, housecall.
Now, back to wet sanding the A.
Safety Fast!
Gordie Bird
'62 MGA
'67 MGBGT
>
> I own a computer consulting company, and 50-90% of our calls have
> to do with
> removing spyware and viruses from people's PCs running Microsoft Operating
> Systems. Here's a pretty good recipe to remove spyware and viruses, and
> protect your computer from future infections (follow all steps,
> this is not
> a time for shortcuts - Feel free to ask me any questions in my direct
> email).
>
> 1. Download a spyware blocking hosts file. You can get one from:
> <http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.zip> Unzip it and copy the hosts
> file to:
> Windows9x: c:\windows\hosts
> Windows NT/2000/XP: %system32%\drivers\etc\hosts
> Verify Microsoft did not make this a .txt file, as it sometimes has a
> habit of doing...
> 2. Install a spyware blocking reg file from:
> <http://www.spywareguide.com/blocklist.reg>
> 3. Install Spyware S&D. You can download it from:
> <http://security.kolla.de> Make sure you download all updates after it is
> installed. After all updates are downloaded, select "Inocculize"
> and let it
> do it's thing.
> 4. Install Adaware, from <http://www.lavasoft.com>. Again install all
> updates.
> 5. Install an anti-virus program. I like Symantic, but AGV is free and
> works. <http://www.grisoft.com>
> 6. Reboot your computer into Safe Mode. If you don't know how
> to do this,
> I believe you hit F6 or F8 while booting. Do an internet search to figure
> it out.
> 7. In Safe Mode, run Spybot S&D first. Clean up everything it
> finds. Run
> AdAware second, clean up everything it finds. Run your
> anti-virus and clean
> up everything it finds.
> 8. On XP/2000/NT, turn off the following services: Alerter, DNS Client,
> Messenger (not MSN messenger, but the messenger service).
> 9. Reboot into normal mode.
> 10. Run Windows Update and install all updates.
> 11. Relax and enjoy computing again.
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