Thanks for all the advice everyone, I appreciate it.
Another vote for winpatrol, I like it better than disabling javascript. Also yes AVG is a false positive machine as well so glad I dumped it.
Another vote for winpatrol.
Skip AVG. While they are coming down off the bloat ware train with 2012 it’s still inferior to lots of other solutions. I say this having just rolled it out to a few hundred different machines. The best I can say is it’s no longer terrible and the corporate rollout console is almost but not quite nice.
This is the true crime, IMO.
Adblock/flashblock/noscript+MWB and you’re set.
I don’t run anti-virus actively, I just install and update MSE if I need to clean up from time to time, and otherwise I run my browser as a non-Admin. I keep regular backups of my outlook and documents folders, and a few other local folders as well, so if I ever pick up a virus, I don’t fuck around, I just wipe the system and re-install the OS.
I have a folder on my external drive wtih a list of the things I want to install, the settings I use for certain things, etc. The entire process takes only a few hours start to finish, and then I know for sure I’m clean.
Plus, I tend to re-claim a lot of my hard drive space when it’s all said and done.
I’m not quite as ready for disaster with my son or my wife’s PC though, nor my daughters laptop, so I have MSE running on them actively.
Just curious, but why not run MSE with active protection?
God I hate these kinds of viruses. Had to clean one off my stepdad’s laptop and then my doctor’s office PC, and the one on that PC is the kind that nukes Malwarebytes as a parting fuck you. Vile.
I’ve had it (and other virus scanning solutions) cause inadvertant problems before. Programs won’t install due to MSE or similar taking an important file and quarantining it in real time, sites that were mistakenly black listed being blocked, etc.
I’m a gamer primarily, and 80% of my PC time is gaming, so I don’t like anything running that takes up resources that could be used elsewhere. I’d rather just spend 2 or 3 hours every 12-18 months wiping and re-building, which actually I haven’t had to wipe and re-build since I went to Windows 7 well over 2 years ago now, and since at that time I set up my IE browser to run from a batch file that calls a non-admin user.
I don’t run AVs resident, but then I practice safe computing and never get infected. If you aren’t as fastidious as me, you should run it resident.
I never ran resident AV either till MSE, but it’s been so lightweight and innocuous that I just leave it on.
Comodo. It is one of the only ones able to regularly defeat content delivery attacks.
I’ve been running MSE with regular MBAM and Spybot sweeps for the last year or so and I’m still getting attacked by viruses. In fact tonight I had one hit me while I was sitting on QT3 (only thing open) typing a post. So I’m getting to the point where jumping to one of the pay services is appealing to me because I don’t know what else to try (and before Tman jumps in, I have Winpatrol running as well after this most recent event).
So I guess my next question is whether the issue just might end up being IE that is my weak point? For what its worth, UAC did kick in tonight (though too late to stop the attack) and was pointing to explorer.exe as being where things were happening.
So I’m curious, did WinPatrol notify you that something was trying to make changes, or just UAC? How do you know it was a virus?
And FFS, get on Chrome or Firefox already ;-)
In the same boat - except replace IE with Firefox. Can’t believe that UAC actually did its job! Unfortunately the virus makes the machine unusable (continuous prompts to start Explorer.exe from UAC makes it impossible to use the machine).
Now I need to reboot into safe mode, and see if I can figure out whats infected when I get home tonight :(
After just curing my dad’s computer of one of these things I’m giving serious thought to buying Malwarebytes Pro. It always does a great job of getting rid of things, so it stands to reason that their real time protection is good too. Does anyone have any experience with MBAM stopping these virus droppers?
Or, you know, you guys can just disable Java and use Chrome. Not Firefox. Not IE.
Chrome.
Too bad Chrome has such a shitty spell checker, otherwise I would.
Is Chrome really that invincible to virus dropping flash?