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Virus Checkers

Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Are there any good free virus checkers available? I think I may be infected, and my checker is quite old. Please help!

Comments

  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Well I found a few through a search engine, I don't know how good they are because I've never used them. But they should start you off in the right direction. Heres the link!

    Ermm yeah <IMG SRC="biggrin.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Firstly if you think your infected go to one of the virus sites I list and download a emergency boot disk then turn your machine off and let it clear its RAM (about 30sec on safe side), write-protect the disk then boot up using it... <IMG SRC="smile.gif" border="0" ALT="icon">

    Viruses are both common place and in my opinion overrated sometimes, a virus is basically a program which continuingly executes itself in order to stay active and then (depending on whats been written for it) deletes stuff, renames things or ruines your O/S so you have to format again (which doesn't always clean it as it can write itself into your boot sector or even your memory)

    Most virus's are caught from people downloading files, from infected floppy disks or from email attachments. These things can be avoided using several methods:

    1) If you get emails which have extentions such as .vbs / .bat / .js don't open them, Outlook XP has built in block protection for any files delievered with these extensions. Remember that you can sometimes get variations where you have to look a bit harder (ie. annakornacola.jpg.js - this is a javascript app not a picture)

    2) Be careful about disks which you put into your machine.. even if they are from friends cause you never know if they don't have protection and can infect you without knowing.

    3) Be careful with all your warez app downloads from KaZaA or Morpheous, they are usually .zip or .exe so watch what your running after all.. they could be infected.

    Now protection then:

    McAfee Anti-Virus - My personal favourite, I used to hate McAfee cause they where the company virus programmers tagetted, but a few years ago they merged with Dr Solomons to form 'Network Associates', great protection, updates every thursday online and fantastic for networks - http://www.nai.com

    Norton Antivirus - I don't like Symantec for a company (except for PCAnywhere and Ghost - and Utilities if you only run it from CD) and I think they are more trouble than they are worth. Norton products have this really bad habit of:

    a) slowing your system down something stupid b) writing itself all over the Windows registry and therefore causing all manner of problems.. especially if you ever god-forbid try and remove it

    So thats my opinion of them and is shared by many Security IT bloke alike... - http://www.norton.com/

    3) Panda Antivirus - A kids on the block in my eyes, not known a great deal about them until the backend of last year. Brilliant protection, cheap and very efficiant... definatly someone to watch in the future - http://www.pandasecurity.com/platinuminfo.htm

    These can all be found through using something like KaZaA or Morpheous, so in theory you do get them for free.. umm.. yeah trial purposes only :P

    So thats about it really... Virus Protection in a nutshell...

    [ 21-04-2002: Message edited by: Justin Credible ]
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    Originally posted by openup:
    <STRONG>Are there any good free virus checkers available? I think I may be infected, and my checker is quite old. Please help!</STRONG>

    goto this site: http://server3.web-mania.com/users/earthlig/AntiVirus/

    It features a free online virus scanner. It loads up a Java applet and scans your pc from the internet.
    Once it is loaded it is fast and will always be the most uptodate virus scanner around.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
    AVG from www.grisoft.com is *Excellent*. It's free and with free updates. Works in the background. The only time I notice is when Outlook Express loads there is a ten second delay while it checks for infections in the OE files.
  • Former MemberFormer Member Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
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