Virus alert

[Laughingman12]

I heard that some virus could disable your antivirus, registry editor and firewall. How do I know if this happen and how do I take action?

 

[Schadenfroh]

Get this in an email?

Sure there is malware out there that can do some insane things, but it would have to be pretty advanced to completely disable your antivirus (if it is up to date and heuristics are maxed out with real-time protection enabled) and firewall from any number of vendors that you could have installed. Running without it being detected by your antivirus is another story and happens far too often than my liking.

Yes, it is possible, and you would probably know it if you got hit by something like that (IE slowdowns), but the best malware never even shows signs, just sits back as a backdoor or key logger and steals your credit card numbers. If you are worried, check out the sticky at the top of this forum to do some scans.

 

[Laughingman12]

I don't buy stuff online. I use phone-phone buying

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Laughingman12
I heard that some virus could disable your antivirus, registry editor and firewall.

Yes, there are zillions of them.

How do I know if this happen and how do I take action?

How to take action: do this, and do this, and if you have XP Professional, also do this.

Tada your system's critical stuff is out of reach of practically everything except you yourself. Don't run warez, cracks, keygens or other stuff that could be a Trojan Horse program, don't open suspicious email attachments, use a router to keep other computers from directly attacking your computer, check all your software for necessary updates, and don't let anyone else use your computer's Admin account either.

Naturally, also use an antivirus program. If you're open to upgrading to Vista, it appears to thwart most of the existing Windows malware. The 64-bit version would be potentially more secure than the 32-bit version, if you're trying to decide.

 

[Laughingman12]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: Laughingman12
I heard that some virus could disable your antivirus, registry editor and firewall.

Yes, there are zillions of them.

How do I know if this happen and how do I take action?

How to take action: do this, and do this, and if you have XP Professional, also do this.

Tada your system's critical stuff is out of reach of practically everything except you yourself. Don't run warez, cracks, keygens or other stuff that could be a Trojan Horse program, don't open suspicious email attachments, use a router to keep other computers from directly attacking your computer, check all your software for necessary updates, and don't let anyone else use your computer's Admin account either.

Naturally, also use an antivirus program. If you're open to upgrading to Vista, it appears to thwart most of the existing Windows malware. The 64-bit version would be potentially more secure than the 32-bit version, if you're trying to decide.

I don't get what doing these setting from this link: http://www.mechbgon.com/build/DEP.gif is going to do.

 

[mechBgon]

I don't get what doing these setting from this link: http://www.mechbgon.com/build/DEP.gif is going to do.

It uses the built-in hardware protection of CPUs that have it, such as Core-series, Athlon64/Opteron, and recent Pentium and Celeron. That arbitrarily stops some types of attacks like the infamous WMF Exploit, which was used to do all sorts of stuff, including installing spyware. Highly recommended to turn it on for all programs.

 

[Laughingman12]

So should you recommend I use AOL Kaspersky antivirus. Is it a really good antivirus?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Laughingman12
So should you recommend I use AOL Kaspersky antivirus. Is it a really good antivirus?

Yeah. It has hourly updates, really strong virus-detection rate, and it's free for home use. :beer: I have the $50 "full" version of Kaspersky, but if I hadn't already paid for that, I'd probably use the free version and blow the $50 on pizza

 

[Laughingman12]

O, hey by the way, If you are using a router, do you still need a firewall?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Laughingman12
O, hey by the way, If you are using a router, do you still need a firewall?

It can still have benefits, yeah. The router's firewall won't protect you from the other computers that are on your router. So if you had visitors, or someone mooching off your wireless if you have wireless, then your software firewall would help protect your computer from theirs, if it was infected (or if they were trying to get into your computer themselves).

 

[Laughingman12]

O, I see by the way, I install AOL Kaspersky and when I check window's security it said I had more than one anti-virus install even I uninstall Antivir and other such.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Laughingman12
O, I see by the way, I install AOL Kaspersky and when I check window's security it said I had more than one anti-virus install even I uninstall Antivir and other such.

What other ones have you had besides AntiVir, do you remember?

 

[Laughingman12]

Avast, antivir thats all I remember trying and I uninstall them all.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Laughingman12
Avast, antivir thats all I remember trying and I uninstall them all.

You might try this:

1) click Start button, click Run, and put services.msc in the Run box. Click OK and the Services window should open.

2) go down the list of Services and see if you see any that obviously are from AntiVir or Avast or other antiviruses besides Active Virus Shield/AOL Kaspersky.

3) if you find any, right-click them and disable them.


Any good?

 

[Laughingman12]

No this is a weird thing, I install a theme pack and after that when I first start my computer on it goes to this blue screen saying error and it suddenly restarts itself. And whats even more wierd is that I uninstall AOL kaspersky and it still show I am using one or more virus program. Please help.

 

[mechBgon]

That's interesting. What theme pack, can you PM me a link to it? Maybe it has a virus in it. Believe it or not, now there are viruses that actually install a hacked antivirus software to kill off competing viruses! :Q

 

[Laughingman12]

And guess what! NOW i CAN'T uninstall the theme pack and I think it is a virus Anyway to reformat your comp without recovery disk?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Laughingman12
And guess what! NOW i CAN'T uninstall the theme pack and I think it is a virus Anyway to reformat your comp without recovery disk?

Maybe you can go back by using System Restore. Look in the Start menu > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > System Restore and see if it has a Restore point that can take you back to before the theme pack?

 

[Laughingman12]

But can't you still reformat your computer?

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Laughingman12
But can't you still reformat your computer?

Yeah, but you need your Windows CD or a system-reimaging CD. Although some pre-built computers have a hidden partition on the hard drive that you can re-image the system to its factory setup.

 

[Laughingman12]

I have an hp z9000 can you help me please.

 

[mechBgon]

First back up all your stuff (documents, music, pics, etc) onto an external hard drive or somewhere else that's safe, because everything on the internal hard drive may get erased.

After you've got stuff backed up, try the instructions that HP has listed here:

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/docu...=18231&lang=en&docname=c00608578#N1006