Suggestion of anti-spy and anti-virus software

[PaRaGaS]

I know that some of you here work in the field of troubleshooting such things, I need reliable bug detection/removal software that I could run from a flash drive or CD on someone's computer. Please post your favorite, trusted software and also one you wouldn't use. It will help me a lot, thanks.

[Sarlon]

avast antivirus is what I highly recommend for an antivirus...its free to download and just requires a valid email address to register. You can download it here...

for a spywear program I'd also highly recommend spybot search and destroy and can be downloaded here

if you need an adware program also...I'd recommend Adaware and it can be found here

All of these are free to download and use and I use them personally on my own compuer and as long as you keep them up todate, and run them regularlly they keep you fine. With avast, they have a pop up that comes up with sound effects that comes up when it detects a virus...very annoying but great deterent.

[Gravekeeper]

I cover my bases with AVG ( Free <3 ) and Spybot + Teatimer ( Also free <3 ).

I will never use Mcafee again. Not only is it huge and bloated but it completely failed to catch a Trojan on me once. I had no idea what or where it was. Reinstalled AVG, AVG found it immediately. <mutter>

Also its a pain the ass as it creeps up as the culprit in half my tech support calls on one account. =p

Not really fond of Avast either to be honest. Adaware is nice to DL and run once every few months or so just to clean out tracker url crap if you don't know where to find it manually. But Spybot/Teatimer stops practically every actual spyware I've ever encountered. With the registry change notification on nothing slips past.

Oh, and if you're already in the shiat with a worm or Trojan. You want Killbox. Killbox it to Hell.

[tropicsgoddess]

I agree with AVG..it's awesome and it's FREE!!!!

[LostMyMind]

The most important part is to boot in safe mode when you go virus hunting.

I would get hijack this, just so you can do a quick look at the startups. and remove any that don't look right. (or those annoying IE add-ons malware). There are also several on-line scans. My personal favorite one is virusscan.jotti.org You can upload a single file and it will scan that file against 21 different virus scanners. I like using hijack this and check every file that gets loaded.

[PaRaGaS]

The most important part is to boot in safe mode when you go virus hunting.

I would get hijack this, just so you can do a quick look at the startups. and remove any that don't look right. (or those annoying IE add-ons malware).

I just need reliable software, thanks. I know what I'm doing.

[draggar]

My quick reply didn't post.

If you're looking at something on the fly, not installed, try

http://housecall.antivirus.com

It's run by Symantec and very thorough. You run it from the web page, boot the PC into safe mode with network support for the best results.

But, if you don't mind installing, I agree w/ AVG, but also get Ad-Aware and SpyBot.

As for something that can be run from a USB drive, I don't have any suggestions.

[PaRaGaS]

But, if you don't mind installing, I agree w/ AVG, but also get Ad-Aware and SpyBot.

That's basically what I was thinking, but I 've seen some bad things written about Ad-Aware here, so I thought that professional opinion would be nice.

[sld72382]

Here's my picks:

1. Smitfraudfix. Takes less than a minute to run and gets rid of those annoying "fake alerts" that many people are getting.

2. CounterSpy.* One of the best scanners I've used.

3. AVG, Avast or AntiVir. All 3 are free.

4. F-prot - only a trial, but it works really well.

5. Hijackthis.

6. Vundofix. Slow, but works in getting virtumonde/vundo off a person's system.


Programs I would avoid:

1. Spysweeper. Only remotely effective if you install the version with virus detection and run it with rootkit detection enabled. Plus, Webroot has a tendency to "cave" to Spyware vendors who don't like Spysweeper catching their shit as spyware. Which is why things like MyWebSearch and WinAntivirus aren't detected.

2. Ad-ware. It's popularity is also it's downfall. Almost all new spywares just bypass it. Don't bother. Also, like Webroot Lavasoft tends to "cave" to whiny spyware vendors.

3. Spybot. It's effective, but it also lists a ton of false postives. I've seen people's computers wrecked because they took Spybot's word that a program was bad when it was legit.

4. Anything by Norton or McAfee. Do I really have to explain?


*Sunbelt is coming with with a new software called "Vipre" that combines CounterSpy with an Antivirus program. Will be worth checking out!

[PaRaGaS]

4. Anything by Norton or McAfee. Do I really have to explain?

Not really, I have the exact same opinion
Thanks, that's pretty much what I was looking for!
I wouldn't have found all this useful software on my own I think.

[rvdammit]

With avast, they have a pop up that comes up with sound effects that comes up when it detects a virus...very annoying but great deterent.

The sounds can be disabled in the Avast settings.

[LostMyMind]

*Sunbelt is coming with with a new software called "Vipre" that combines CounterSpy with an Antivirus program. Will be worth checking out!

/thread hijack
Well, that one of the reasons I like comodo's newest firewall. They combined a malware scanner/prevention with their firewall. It's not an anti-virus, but if you put it on paranoid mode it'll prompt you for every program's attempt to do anything and you can decide if you'll let that program do it. Which is handy. I sometimes don't even let some games have access to the control panel. You'll be surprise how many lazy programmers are there that access things they really don't need to be accessing.
/hijack over

Well, let us know if you manage to get it cleaned without resorting to demagnetizing the hard-drive

[Broomjockey]

What surprises me is sld's condemnation of Spy-bot. I don't think I've ever heard anyone say anything bad about it before.
Was that just because the user didn't know what they were doing, or was it a deeper issue?
(threadjacking because of a recent install... )

[LostMyMind]

It's more of the "It's too dangerous for the general public to have" way of thinking.

Problem with any malware/virus scanner is false positive. There will always be false positive. If a scanner produce too many false positive and you accepted the false positives.....

As long as you know what and why it's flagging things as "malware" and you actually take the time to check if it really is a malware. It's not a problem. However, if you blindly accept it's word that something is a malware (or trace of a malware) and remove a system dependency file/registry entry/etc.... Well. we all know what happens when that happens.

[vman]

/thread hijack
Well, that one of the reasons I like comodo's newest firewall. They combined a malware scanner/prevention with their firewall. It's not an anti-virus, but if you put it on paranoid mode it'll prompt you for every program's attempt to do anything and you can decide if you'll let that program do it. Which is handy. I sometimes don't even let some games have access to the control panel. You'll be surprise how many lazy programmers are there that access things they really don't need to be accessing.
/hijack over

Well, let us know if you manage to get it cleaned without resorting to demagnetizing the hard-drive

/More threadjack

To be fair to those lazy programmers, some operations which *seem* like they wouldn't need to access the control panel, do, in fact, require the control panel (or windows diagnostics, depending on what you're doing).