There is “free solutions” for fixing, maintaining or disinfect your computer worse than paid solutions? I name them solutions because there is not about a certain AntiVirus or AntiMalware, instead is about of a set of combined methods to avoid computer infections, methods which can give you the best protection, much better than a single paid AntiVirus or AntiMalware program.
A paid solution is when you purchase a program for maintaining your computer like a Registry Cleaner, a Disk Cleaner or an AntiVirus for protecting or disinfect the computer, or when you pay an “expert” for doing these but they using the same programs. Almost all the System Utilities are available by default in all versions of Windows in Accesories > System Tools search for them, and paid programs use at LOW level the same dlls, use the same Windows packages but in another commercial envelope. If you want “another one” than Windows programs there is a lot of freebies programs out there.
Bundled with Windows come for free Windows Defender and Windows Firewall but how many use them ? I don’t say they are the best for protecting, anyway the most computer users prefer to buy an “good” AntiVirus like Norton or NOD32 or Kaspersky or Bitdefender thinking they are FULL protected by now.
This is BIGGEST mistake ! There is no perfect AntiVirus that can “catch” all the viruses and trojans, they all have a higher or lower rate of success . I’m still waiting for the AntiVirus Company what can GUARANTEE me that I will not be hacked and my personal data stolen. The Companies advertise their “Full Protection” and give to the computer users the feeling they are 100% protected, nothing can be more wrong. Every day the malware programmers releases new trojans and malwares unknown for a good period of time for AntiViruses. If you download cracked programs from forums or blogs the popular warez but not only, simple techniques using freeware programs can help you protect yourself better than an expensive AntiVirus alone.
It is a known fact that when scanning online a program(.exe) different AntiViruses report different things, where one detect a trojan, other one detect nothing and the third one report a worm.
How it is to have your paypal account hacked, email hacked, credit card details stolen? A lot of hackers are hunting for them!
Again, I don’t say to drop to the garbage the AntiViruses, but knowing some simple facts can help to protect us much better. Knowledge is power ! AntiViruses are good, a “must-have” freeware or paid, but don’t rely only on them, don’t put all your eggs in the same basket, because they have limitations.
The aim of this site is to help you protect, mantain and fix your computer as much as possible approaching free solutions. Of course, for who are too lazy or not sure what they do, the paid solutions are the alternative.
nice blog and good software.
Anything about browser specific viruses?? I’ve just found that one favorite website is infected. When trying to access this web site, my Kaspersky said “The requested object is INFECTED with the following viruses: Trojan-Clicker.JS.Iframe.ea”. How they do it?
You seem very knowledgable about this subject matter and it shows. Cheers!
Epic Post. Better then the simillar post I discovered last Thursday on WordPress. Maintain the great work.
dan, a very interesting subject, about viruses that comes through the web browser. It’s very difficult to prevent such infections and presume a different new approach. Whilst, the classic methods of infecting presume to download an infected file and run it, you can be infected via web browser sometimes only by watching a videoclip from a bad site.
If you download a file from an untrusted source, before to run it, you can carefully analyse it by-hand with methods described here for example : http://cleanbytes.net/tips/avoid-computer-infections-tips/ or you can submit the file for analysis to a multi-engine scanning services posted on the home page of this site. But you can not analyse yourself a web page before to view it. If you feel you are not well protected by your antivirus, you can download an add-on for Firefox, Internet Explorer or Google Chrome named Web Of Trust – WOT shortly — http://www.mywot.com/ , this add-on will check the sites you visited against an almost 30,000,000 sites database.
Anyway, if the virus is already installed in the computer, it can be deleted with classic methods :
-disable System Restore;
-kill its process(see Process Explorer by sysinternals.com — http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx );
-find where is the virus copied on harddisk and delete it(Unlocker can help here), if it’s the case modify the file attributes by unchecking Read Only property from the file properties;
Often the viruses are hidden or protected by Windows itself as a system file so you must set in Control Panel > Folder Options to show hidden files and folders and protected operating system files;
-delete all its registry entries and specially autorun entries(see Autoruns by sysinternals.com — http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963902.aspx );
Thank you. I suppose that in your statement “download a file from an untrusted source”, means even just loading the web-page I try to access…. because this is what I only did! :o)