How to keep your machine virus/trojan/spyware/malware free.

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » May 19th, 2005, 16:34

Okay, the following is a list of FREE software that every home MS Windows user should be using, to help protect their machine from all manner of horrible nasty's.

Internet Browser :

Mozilla Firefox http://www.getfirefox.com
This is fast becoming the only real alternative to Internet Explorer, and not only does it have really quick and useful features such as tabbed browsing, it's also free from a great deal of spyware.
Id suggest everyone to use Firefox as their default browser, and only revert to I.E. for those pages that are either coded very badly, or are specific to I.E. such as the Windows Update site.

Spyware Removal :

Ad-Aware SE Personal Edition 1.06 http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-SE-Per ... ag=lst-0-1
A very good free Ad-Aware product, but you have to remember to manually run scans, as well as manually updating the definition files. It's always good to run at least 2 different anti spyware programs, so I'd suggest running this twice a month, and finding one of the many alternatives on download.com, and running that as well.

Housekeeping :

CCleaner (aka Crap Cleaner) http://www.ccleaner.com/
This product has been around for a long time, and has come a long way. I work in Desktop Support, and have used this on operating systems ranging from Windows 95 - Windows XP, and it has never deleted anything it shouldn't do.
The performance gains on some of the PC's I have ran it on for the first time have been quite astounding. Basically it's aware of lots and lost of different apps, and removes all traces of logs, history, temp files etc... that clog up your machine, and can slow down response times when accessing files and so on. Simple to use, and it can also fix shortcut/registry/startup problems if you so wish.

Trojan Scanner :

a-squared Free http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/
This requires creating an account on a web page, but it's the best free trojan scanner out there at the moment.
Install, sign up, update, and run a scan to see if there are any trojan files running on your machine. I'd recommend only running this once a month myself.

Free Virus Scanners :

AVG Anti Virus http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php
avast! 4 Home Edition http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html

Any suggestions/links for additions to this post will be welcome.

EDIT : Virus applications may be out of date, but the product names should always stay the same, so please just google them to find the right download location.

Post by **TezzRexx** » May 19th, 2005, 16:41

Woah, cheers for the Ccleaner, i just got a Gig back of space!

Cheers!

Post by **deject** » May 19th, 2005, 17:08

For really nasty IE Hijacks like CoolWebSearch and the like, I wholeheartedly recommend HijackThis! Also, I have been using Spybot Seach & Destroy for a while. however, since I've been using Firefox and not installing every dumbass program I see on the internet, I haven't had any spyware in over 6 months.

Post by **deject** » May 19th, 2005, 17:11

also, AVG Free Anti-Virus is great for anti-virus protection. It's every bit as effective as Norton or McAfee and at the low low cost of free.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » May 19th, 2005, 17:19

as far as virus scanners go (in this case, non free)

I swear by symantec 10, had no end of trouble with panda AV (ended up reinstalling windows to clear the issues)

wyrd · Post by **wyrd** » May 19th, 2005, 17:25

norton was forver dicking me about, so after it fubared windows twice, i moved to avast

seems pretty good

Post by **TezzRexx** » May 19th, 2005, 18:00

How is norton one of the most popular, yet one of the most spacky virus checkers around?

Sol · Post by **Sol** » May 19th, 2005, 19:59

I am use mcAfee, its not too bad.

The Crapcleaner is good!

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » May 19th, 2005, 20:39

I use PC-illin for my virus/wirewall stuff, works quite well, saved me when I installed a very dodgy torrent download. Plus adaware and now ccleaner, cheers WEY

mrbobbins · Post by **mrbobbins** » May 19th, 2005, 20:52

Wow, CCleaner is good

, not heard of it before, cheers WEY, and Ad Aware is all the good. If you do get a Cool Web Search variant then I found the only way to really get rid of it was with CWShredder

http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4086.html

killslay · Post by **killslay** » May 19th, 2005, 21:20

i've got grisoft's avg free edition running and symantech corprate edition... what are you talking about... OF COURSE IT'S A LEGITIMATE COPY!
and for spyware i highly reccomend spybot search and destroy, works like a charm and its free, also it blocks all bad spyware automatically and you can pretend to be cool by not using a microsoft endorsed product
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html anyhoo it can be found at that address

NiGhtcrawler · Post by **NiGhtcrawler** » May 19th, 2005, 21:37

CCleaner, very nice find WEY :D

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » May 25th, 2005, 8:19

Can I have more suggestions for free virus scanners please :D

comrade yannnovski · Post by **comrade yannnovski** » May 25th, 2005, 8:31

I think it was mentioned briefly up there somewhere, but Avast is what I use and I have found it very good. Did I hear a rumour that AVG is no longer going to be free?

Woo Elephant Yeah · Post by **Woo Elephant Yeah** » May 25th, 2005, 8:35

comrade yannnovski wrote:I think it was mentioned briefly up there somewhere, but Avast is what I use and I have found it very good. Did I hear a rumour that AVG is no longer going to be free?

spankyou

Stoat · Post by **Stoat** » May 25th, 2005, 13:35

Any information on Firewalls?
I've used:
Zone Alarm- it gets bloated and slow after a few months.
Kiero Personal Firewall - Nice, but I was never sure it was working correctly.
Sygate Personal Firewall - I'm using this now. Does the job very well, though the last version I had stopped working after a while fo no apparent reason.

All free. Any others?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » May 25th, 2005, 13:38

sygate personal has a properly free, and a 30 day trial version.

though, windows firewall is fine for incoming stuff, just doesn't restrict outgoing.

Stoat · Post by **Stoat** » May 25th, 2005, 13:46

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:sygate personal has a properly free, and a 30 day trial version.

It was the free version, something just screwed up. One day it just wouldn't load at startup properly and I spent half a day trying to figure out why I had no internet connection.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » May 25th, 2005, 13:47

ahh, odd that, sometimes it's auto updates FUBARed when i used it.

http://smb.sygate.com/products/spf_standard.htm is the free one for those who have trouble finding it

Post by **Dog Pants** » May 25th, 2005, 17:01

I always found ZoneAlarm to be very effective, but I think it was causing a lot of lag in CS:S on Bukkake. I tried Sygate instead but I kept finding a Worm (Sasser maybe) getting through. It is possible, however, that I had this before Sygate because I dropped my firewall for a few minutes and got invaded by stuff before I installed it.

I use both now, and next time I try CS:S I'll try just using Sygate. That's if I ever stop playing COD:UO