OMG somebody installed malware on my PC. www.dnsbasic.com

[ImDonly1]

FYI, in the future Hijack This is a good program to fix redirect malware.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/

 

[mikeymikec]

I didn't realize MSE sucked that much. To be honest with you it's the first antivirus I've consistently used because it's free and it's just there. I've been perhaps very lucky or benefited from herd immunity because in almost two decades of having a PC I've pretty much never run an antivirus and in terms of bonafide definite viruses I'd say I get one per decade. Malware is another matter, though I'm very careful with what I click and I use this PC for 90% of the time, just not 100% unfortunately.

berryracer has a serious bee in his bonnet about MSE. It has a reasonably decent security rep, do your own research if you wish to satisfy your curiosity on this point.

There isn't any such thing as foolproof security, I've seen every security product get bypassed.

How do you know that you're not infected if you don't have a virus scanner?

First, you don't know whether your system is infected even with anti-virus software.
Second, the best judgement you can make is based on symptoms.

I would +1 someone else's comment about all anti-virus products being crap, because their functions are pretty basic. Don't rely on anti-virus software to protect you. *You* are the best line of defence for your computer.

 

[Ketchup]

Don't rely on anti-virus software to protect you. *You* are the best line of defence for your computer.

This is what I normally say. I used to removed viruses from computers quite often, and unless you remove them within a couple hours of infection, your restore points are useless. They either will stop working, or start contaminating themselves.

Most recently I have been trying out some different add-ons for Firefox. There are some that do a good job of blocking the crap from getting there in the first place, making it less crucial that your antivirus catch the Malware as soon as you click the wrong button.