Good Free Antivirus software.

[Gateruner]

Recently Becca clicked on a link to view photos of Jenna Bush and what she got was 7 trojans installed. Not a good thing. I tried all of my normal anti virus removal sites including Trend Micro, Panda, AVG and Microsoft's version of AV software. None of them recognized or fixed the trojans. I eventually ran across a program from Avast that turned out to be an outstanding piece of "free" software. They have a corporate version that you have to pay for but the home edition is free. Worked great and cleaned the computer when no other software would. (I have no faith in Symantic or Mcafee so I dont even bother with them)

Just wanted to mention this for anyone that is interested. I now run it along with AVG.

Site is avast dot com for anyone that is interested.

[phillip ino]

If you use Time Warner Cable, they offer CA to their customers for free. Other than that, I had good experiences with AVG, but I see you had no luck there.

[Tim-in-TX]

I run AVG, Spybot Search and Destroy and AdAware and I have never had trouble...knock on wood. The combination of the three seems to work really well. But I am Mac person now, and only use windows once or twice a week, so I don't worry much.

[kenmyers70]

I also use AVG, Spybot, and AdAware and have not had trouble. Be careful, some of the otherSpyware/Virus checkers out there are not legit. Some are actually trojans. Some offer free tools to identify problems, but charge to fix. These typically ALWAYS find a problem which needs to be "Fixed".

[amadjuster]

Try running you scans on SAFE mode to prevent the little buggers from reinstalling from their hiding places. Also disconnect from the Net. Don't you love spammers!

[Beezwax]

+12345 on AVG

[Gateruner]

I have had AVG back when the entire program was free and not even being offered for sale. Until last week I had nothing but praise for it but this mess of crap fooled it as well. I still have it but added Avast along side it. I have seen those search for you then charge you to fix it sites. Panda is similar to that but they tell you the results and you can manually fix the issue. Always worked before but not this time.

[amadjuster]

Are you running 7.5 or 8.0?

[SCone]

All anti-virus software is a trojan, at least by definition. A "trojan" is a program that monitors certain computer activity. May be anything from the current time to a certain keystroke combinations. It's just laying back and watching.

[amadjuster]

Originally Posted by SCone

All anti-virus software is a trojan, at least by definition. A "Trojan" is a program that monitors certain computer activity. May be anything from the current time to a certain keystroke combinations. It's just laying back and watching.

Where did you get that definition? All of the sources I have looked at define a TROJAN is a malicious program hiding in what looks like a harmless or proper program. Except for Norton, I know of no legitimate anti-virus that falls under that definition.

[amadjuster]

MORE: (From Wikapedia)

"In the context of computing and software, a Trojan horse, or simply trojan, is a piece of software which appears to perform a certain action but in fact performs another such as a computer virus. Contrary to popular belief, this action, usually encoded in a hidden payload, may or may not be actually malicious, but Trojan horses are notorious today for their use in the installation of backdoor programs. Simply put, a Trojan horse is not a computer virus. Unlike such malware, it does not propagate by self-replication but relies heavily on the exploitation of an end-user (see Social engineering). It is instead a categorical attribute which can encompass many different forms of codes. Therefore, a computer worm or virus may be a Trojan horse. The term is derived from the classical story of the Trojan Horse.
In the field of computer architecture, 'Trojan Horse' can also refer to security loopholes that allow kernel code to access anything for which it is not authorized."

A Trojan is not technically a Virus, but is still malware.

[deep_creek]

hands-down: Comodo. Anti-virus and firewall with free lifetime license. They are a top-notch security company that offers there products free to consumers. All of there stuff is very very highly rated.

Link: http://www.comodo.com/

[SCone]

Originally Posted by amadjuster

Contrary to popular belief, this action, usually encoded in a hidden payload, may or may not be actually malicious

As I stated, a trojan sits and watches for something to happen. It may take a certain keystroke or a specific computer event to activate it. What it does from that point is up to whoever wrote the code.

In the case of anti-virus software, it sits and watches. Anytime something tries to write to the root or to an exe, it activates and does it's job.

Maybe I was too simplistic with my previous post, but never the less, I've always found it funny that anti-virus programs work the same as the programs they are trying to protect.

[Dobick]

one piece of not-free software that I would highly recommend for anyone that has other people using your computer (seems like most bad things are done by people who do not know better) is centurion.

It basically locks the computers operating system so that nothing gets permanently written to the harddrive of the protected areas. So if you come across anything nasty, all you need to do is reboot. So once you load all of the programs that you want onto the PC (things like updates, flash, etc) you activate the lock, and then nothing at all can change the system files.

It can sometimes be a hassle, but for the most part it is a really good thing, and can save a lot of headaches.

makes it very nice for research.

The best part is, you can save to other partitions without any problems at all.

Forgot the link http://www.centuriontech.com/

[LDB]

A lot of folks suggest Linux or Apple as the solution.